Tuisto
Tuisto [Ty: sto:] is the name of a Germanic god who has only been handed down in this spelling in Tacitus' work Germania :
"Celebrant carminibus antiquis (quod unum apud illos memoriae et annalium genus est) Tuisconem deum Terra editum et filium Mannum originem gentis conditorisque."
"As ancestors and founders of their people, they glorify [the Teutons] in old songs - the only kind of historical tradition that they have with them - Tuisto, a god who grew out of the earth, and his son Mannus."
The Germania manuscripts offer a wide variety of spellings for the name; the main variants are Tuistonem and Tuisconem . A decision between the two forms of name is not possible based on tradition or etymology. Both can be traced back to an element in Germanic * twis- "two-". At Tuisconem there would be a further training course with the suffix Urermanisch * -ka- ( Urermanisch * twis-ka- "two-fold", continued in Old High German between , Middle High German between , Anglo-Saxon twisc "two times "), while Tuistonem would offer further training with the suffix Urermanisch * - ta- ( Ur- Germanic * twis-ta- “two parts ”, continued in New High German Zwist , Old English tvist “fork”, Old Icelandic tvistr “two parts”, Old Icelandic tvistra “separate”). Whatever the form of the name, in both cases the name is to be understood as a hybrid . The bisexual Tuisto is a god born out of the earth, whereby it is assumed that the Germanic peoples imagined this as mother earth .
Two-sex primitive beings appear more frequently in the mythological conception. A parallel can be found in Old Norse mythology in the form of the ancient giant Ymir .
In terms of language and function, Tuisto is closely related to Tvashtri , the androgynous old Vedic creator god.
Modern reception
With the rediscovery of Germania in the 16th century, Tuisto, now called Thuiskon with many spelling variants, was rediscovered. From then on he functioned as the progenitor of the German nation and was immortalized as such in countless works by contemporary writers and poets. In the 16th century, the authors tried to embed him in a Christian context and to portray him as the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Noah . This reception can be found among others with the following authors:
- Burkhard Waldis mentions it in his work The Origin and Origin of the First Twelve Old Kings and Princes of the German Nation from 1543.
- In Johannes Aventinus ' Bavarian Chronicle (1554), as with Waldis, in addition to “Tuiscon, aller Deudschen vatter”, a whole series of fictional characters are combined to form a national myth.
- The historian Matthias Quad also takes up this myth in his Memorabilia mundi :
Ascenas, who is called Tuiscon / Who
was the Gomer's son
Den Japhet after the eruption of sin /
As the scriptures testify to this clearly /
As Nymbrot Babylon nam a
Vand appreciates it for its being /
Since it was mentioned /
And the languages there confused:
Remained At Tuiscon die Teutsche,
Vnd at his family afterwards spoke :
From father Noha g finished /
who also gave him this advice /
with all those from his
tribe / that the Germans first landed / there is
a regiment. (...)
- With Elias Schedius and Sigmund von Birken one can still find offshoots of this myth in the 17th century. In Birken's Sächsisches Helden-Saal (1677) it says: "So then / this Ascenas / was an Ertz father of the Germans / who are also called by the Ebreern / Aschenazim."
- Daniel Casper von Lohenstein lets his bards sing in the first book of the first part of his novel Generous General Arminius :
Tuiscon's soul lives in our hero's bodies /
She leads the lions by the hand like Alemann /
Has Hermion made war heroes out of women too /
So art is not unknown to the Herrmann /
When
armed princes fall from Thussnelden's hardship / and from Ismenen's spit armed princes and kiss their temples.
In the 18th century Thuiskon broke away from the Christian context and is mentioned by the following authors, among others:
- In Anton von Klein and Ignaz Holzbauer's opera Günther von Schwarzburg , the title hero calls out to his army in the eleventh appearance of the first act:
Men! Men! your struggle is a
whirlwind flame , which devours a tower like hay!
Father Teut! these - they are of your tribe!
How annoyed their eyes beckon against the degenerate!
Fatherland! So I call your souls
When a hundred thousand enemies threaten!
Fatherland! can you still count enemies? (...)
Fatherland! Thuiskon's name shines on your forehead!
- Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock wrote the Ode Thuiskon in 1764 , but also mentions him in other works.
- Joseph Martin Kraus mentions him in his song “Ich bin ein deutscher Jüngling”, a reply to Klopstock's fatherland song : “If you don't come from Thuiskon, don't look after the girl.”
See also
literature
- Jan de Vries: Old Germanic history of religion. Volume II: The gods - ideas about the cosmos. The fall of paganism. 3rd edition, Berlin 1970, p. 364.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jaumann, Herbert (ed.). Discourses of Scholarly Culture in the Early Modern Age. A manual. P. 110.
- ↑ ders., P. 112.
- ↑ Generous general Arminius
- ↑ Klopstock's "Thuiskon"