Thule collection

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Binding (dust jacket) of volume 2 of the collection (Felix Genzmer's Edda translation)

The Thule Collection (full title: Thule - Old Norse Poetry and Prose ) is a series of books that comprehensively compiled the medieval Icelandic-Nordic saga literature , mythological writings of the Edda and poetic writings of the Skaldik in German translation. In each volume, the series had a double-sided title page designed by Friedrich Hermann Ernst Schneidler and next to the Diederichs lion its own series emblem in the form of a falcon. The volumes were published uniformly with a simpler half-canvas decoration and a better edition in half-parchment and marbled book covers. There was also a limited special edition for the first series in dark blue full leather on handmade paper. The Thule Collection was initially published in two series by the old Germanist Felix Niedner in the publishing house of Eugen Diederichs from 1911 and completed in 1930 with Volume 24. Numerous contemporary scholars of ancient German and Scandinavian studies took responsibility for the individual volumes. In particular, the editions of the Eddic writings achieved scientific standard literary rank. The last volume, Sturlungsgeschichten, is the rarest antiquarian title in the Thule series because of its lower binding rate.

By today's standards, they should be read with caution and most universities do not recommend working with these translations. The reasons for this are that parts of the text have been left out (e.g. about Christianity ) in order to depict a perfect pagan world.

Between 1963 and 1967 there followed a new edition with scientific commentary and unchanged content. In 1971 this new edition was joined by the newly written introductory volume: "The Old Island" by Hans Kuhn . As a result, the publisher published partial editions and compilations from the series such as the Icelandic Sagas under the headings:

  • Icelandic saga 1 - storytelling
  • Icelandic saga 2 - heroic epics
  • Icelandic saga 3 - historical rides and adventures

In 1978 a revised and expanded introductory volume was published by Kuhn.

The popular Edda transmissions, or rather the transmission of the Lieder Edda by Felix Genzmer , are published independently, regardless of the series . A new series of Saga , which was published by Diederichs-Verlag in the 1990s and was supposed to follow up on the old Thule series in new translations, was discontinued after 8 volumes.

Volumes

The authors responsible for the transfers are shown in brackets.

literature

  • Eugen Diederichs : From my life. Diederichs, Jena 1938, pp. 50, 67, 78.
  • Ulf Diederichs: Eighty Years of the Thule Collection. In: From the second-hand bookshop. No. 11, 1991, ISSN  0343-186X , pp. 417-426.
  • Kurt Schier : The literatures of the north. In: Gangolf Hübinger (Ed.): Meeting place of modern spirits. The Eugen-Diederichs-Verlag - departure into the century of extremes. Diederichs, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-424-01260-2 , pp. 411-449, esp .: p. 426.
  • Julia Zernack: The "Myth of the North" and the crisis of modernity. Scandinavian literature in the program of Eugen Diederichs Verlag. In: Justus H. Ulbricht, Meike G. Werner (Ed.): Romanticism, Revolution and Reform. The Eugen-Diederichs-Verlag in the context of the epochs 1900–1949. (Ulrich Hermann on his 60th birthday). Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-89244-344-0 , pp. 208-223.