Weak matikus
Schwachmatikus or Schwachmatiker , today mainly Schwachmat , is an expression that originally comes from the student language, but was later adopted into common usage. This word jokingly denotes a mentally or physically weak person or one who is timid and does not trust himself.
The word probably originated in an academic environment around 1700 . Expressions like mathematicus , rheumaticus or phlegmaticus are likely to have served as models for word formation . Nowadays the expression “weak mat” is mostly used as an insult.
Literary Uses in the 19th Century
In his book on student language, published in Strasbourg in 1895 , the linguist Friedrich Kluge suspects that the expression Schwachmatikus arose from the word Pfiffikus . Friedrich Kluge is referring to a lecture by John Meier on student language in the city of Halle , which puts the origin of the word in the early 19th century, as the writer Friedrich Christian Laukhard uses it several times in his academic novels.
Theodor Heinsius explains the word in his Volkstümlichen German dictionary from 1822 in the fourth volume with the description “a weak hero” and notes that it is “a joke of common life” . In the first third of the 19th century, the word is likely to have been used in a non-academic environment.
In the ninth volume of the dictionary of the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm from 1899 there is a reference for the word from 1820.
The Hamburg bookseller Friedrich Perthes brings an earlier literary document from the beginning of the 19th century in the second volume of his magazine Vaterländisches Museum from 1811. He published in this volume under the title Der Schwachmaticus und seine vier Brüder & c. Fragment of a novel by Wilhelm Tischbein, a fragment of a novel by the painter Wilhelm Tischbein . This fragment is possibly part of the novel planned by Tischbein with the title Eselroman , because Tischbein was still busy writing this book in 1818. In this book, Tischbein wanted, as reported in the romantic Göttingen magazine Wünschelruthe from February 1818, "to weave his views of life and art". From the fragment published by Friedrich Perthes, however, it is not clear which person represents the "weak matikus" or why he is referred to as such.
The word is also listed in the first edition of the dictionary for the explanation and Germanization of foreign expressions that have penetrated our language: a supplementary volume to Adelung's dictionaries by Joachim Heinrich Campe from 1801, which proves the general awareness of the term as early as the beginning of the 19th century .
Literary Uses in the 18th Century
In the dramatic pasquill with the title Doctor Bahrdt with the Iron Forehead, or the German Union against Zimmermann. A play by Knigge from 1790, which was written by August von Kotzebue , the word Schwachmatikus is in a list of swearwords that Doctor Bahrdt uttered to Johann Georg Zimmermann and his book Fragments about Friedrich the Great . Zimmermann was Frederick the Great's last doctor and published his book in 1790.
Many of the swear words listed in Kotzebue are taken from the book Mit dem Herr von Zimmermann… spoken in German , which was written in 1790 by the theologian Karl Friedrich Bahrdt . In it, Bahrdt writes, among other things, that Johann Georg Zimmermann lived in fear that Frederick the Great would "recognize him on the first day for a weak matikus and release him".
Further evidence of the use of the word can be found in the poem Hear, Grandchildren, hear incredible effort! by Gottfried August Bürger . In his poem from 1787 he describes in a humorous way the creation of a celebratory song that he wrote for the 50th anniversary of the Göttingen University . He explains that anyone who is asked to pull the Georgia Augusta's chariot of fame would like to evade this honor. Eberhard Habernickel, a private lecturer and lawyer, apologizes that he is a weak matikus "... hardly stronger than two bees, / gnawed by the worm to the core, / who has to breathe every fifteen paces in the countryside."
In the collection of poems, Second Time Pastime in Teutschen Gedichten , published in 1747 by Christoph Friedrich Wedekind under his pseudonym Crescentius Koromandel, there is a poem with the title Das Jungfern-Protocoll . In this poem, designed as a trial, Cupid appears as the accuser and complains before the hymen that the girls behaved capriciously and stubbornly towards their admirers. As evidence for his accusation, he quotes statements by young girls such as: "Merciful weak matikus / Gertrud replies with annoyance, / What does the gentleman look for in my aprons / Another time I will spice him up." The expression weak matikus is used here in a way used as if a saint was asked for help in an invocation, but is also to be understood as a disparaging assessment of the devotee.
At the time when he published his collection of poems, Christoph Friedrich Wedekind was employed as the secretary of Prince Georg Ludwig von Holstein-Gottorp and stayed in student-academic circles near Danzig . Later he was court counselor at the court of the Prince-Bishop of Lübeck , in Eutin in the service of Friedrich August , the brother of Georg Ludwig. Wedekind had sent his collection of poems from Eutin to the “Deutsche Gesellschaft” in Göttingen in 1752, and Wilhelm Tischbein had also written his fragment of a novel in Eutin. Tischbein lived in this city from 1808 until his death in 1829.
Since Christoph Friedrich Wedekind, whose poem provides the oldest evidence of an occurrence of the word so far, had studied in the university towns of Helmstedt and probably previously in Rinteln , it can be assumed with some probability that the word Schwachmatikus originally appeared in academic circles around 1700 today's Lower Saxony originated.
literature
- Kurt Schreiner: weak matikus. A word history mishap . In: Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennica B 84, 1954, pp. 179-183.
