Würzburg mark descriptions
The Würzburg Mark descriptions are two profane, practical texts from the corpus of Old High German literature from the 8th century . The vernacular descriptions of the border inspections in the Würzburg area are recorded in the documents.
The second mark description has attracted particular attention in research, as it is written entirely in German and is valid as the oldest German legal text or as a German text with a documentary legal character. The practice of description in the sense of actually inspecting the territorial boundaries of a property was of enormous, central importance in public administration in the legal practice of early medieval culture without the later formed cadastre , as well as the associated mapping of districts and corridors .
Lore
Both texts are in a manuscript from the 9th century , a code of gospels with origins in Fulda , the University Library of Würzburg (UB M. p. Th. F. 66) in slides 1 r –1 v and 208 v and were handed down around the Year 1000 entered by an unknown hand as a supplement on the first and last sheet.
First mark description
The first description of the mark is written in Latin and dates to the year 779. In the vernacular, grammatical accessories such as articles, adjectives and prepositions appear in addition to the names of places, fields, waters and people. Together with the Hammelburg mark description , the first mark description belongs to the group of early medieval Latin border descriptions.
The structure corresponds to the contemporary Carolingian (private) documents with the formal structure :
In the border inspection it is described how Eburhardus, an envoy of Charlemagne, on October 14th, 779, starting in the western, left- Main Main city area, clockwise expired the mark in four sections. He is accompanied by various witnesses, eighty-two in all, and by a presbyter by the name of Bernger, through whom the incident was noted. The reason is assumed to be the determination or confirmation of the border between the Waldsassengau , the Badanachgau and the left-Main Episcopal property of the marcham vuirziburganensium .
Second mark description
The second completely vernacular, undated description of the market is titled in Latin with Marchia ad UUirziburg . It is thus more closely aligned with the time of the writer than the first. In addition to the conspicuous short names of some witnesses, the sentence-introducing formulas such as diz sageta are evidence of the proximity to the spoken language compared to the formal, factual formulation of the first mark description.
The ascent and description begins clockwise on the right side of the Main and crosses the Main at the end point of the first description. Then it follows this in a westerly direction and then takes its own further course. Eighteen named men testify to this intercourse.
The purpose was to show the districts of Würzburg and Heidingsfeld as a total property of the bishop and as a “royal inheritance and inheritance of free Francs” in the sense of a recorded testimony . In research, a time for the first description of the marrow is assumed to be the dating.
literature
- expenditure
- Wilhelm Braune : Old High German Reader. 17th edition edited by Ernst Albrecht Ebbinghaus , Niemeyer, Tübingen 1994, ISBN 3-484-10708-1 .
- Elias von Steinmeyer : The smaller Old High German language monuments. Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1916, p. 115ff. ( Digitized version )
Research literature
- Reinhard Bauer : The oldest border descriptions in Bavaria and their statements for naming and history. (= The field names of Bavaria 8) Self-published Association for place and field name research in Bavaria eV, Munich 1988.
- Wolfgang Beck : Würzburg market descriptions. In: Rolf Bergmann (Ed.): Old High German and Old Saxon Literature. de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-024549-3 , pp. 528-530.
- Wolfgang Beck: The Würzburg market descriptions. Aspects of a reassessment. In: Sprachwissenschaft 38, 2 (2013), pp. 211–226.
- Stephan Müller : Old High German Literature. A commented anthology: Old High German, Old Low German / New High German. (= Reclams Universal Library 18491) Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-15-018491-2 .
- Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand : Würzburg mark descriptions. In: Burghart Wachinger et al. (Ed.): Author's Lexicon. The German Literature of the Middle Ages Vol. 10, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1999, Col. 1455–1458.
- Norbert Wagner : Christesbrunno and Huohhobura. To the Old High German Würzburg mark descriptions. In: Contributions to name research NF, 12 (1977), pp. 372-391.