Value and honor of the German language
The value and honor of the German language is an article by Hugo von Hofmannsthal that appeared on December 26, 1927 in the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten . The first book edition took place in the same year as a preface to the volume published by Hofmannsthal "Wert und Ehre deutscher Sprache, in Zeugnisse" in the bibliophile publishing house of the Bremer Presse .
With its complaint about the turmoil of the German nation and its language , the work belongs in the context of his great literary speech .
content
Hofmannsthal distinguishes the German language first in the high range of poetry and that of the expressive popular dialects . It is noticeable that there is a lack of a “middle language” of sociability that the other nations have at their disposal. In it the "face of a nation" shows itself, even if it is no longer present. For example, one recognizes the expression of the Romans through the different, derived languages of the middle level. A lot of mistrust and unrest among Germans stems from the fact that they have little understanding for the others.
The "middle languages" were used for supra-individual communication , since in them "the individual word is neither too powerful nor too bright". This is not about the speaker and his personal depths and abysses, but about the interweaving of the community: "In his speaking the individual represents himself, in the whole language the whole is represented."
The current lingua franca consists of a mixture of individual languages, in which the individual words lead a life of their own, which at best could occasionally tame the individual. So it is only possible to write individually or "badly".
Instead of an appropriate "sociable language", the Germans, according to Hofmannsthal, produced a language of use that would be animated by different dialects. This language has many vices: it vacillates between extremes; too many “philosophically trained concepts” are present in it, which have to be checked in order not to “fall into neglect”, to appear pedantic, affected or solitary. The language is "full of crushed vanities, false titanisms, full of weaknesses that want to pretend to be strengths." Even if you read a large part of German literature - you will not find the essence of the nation like that. This is revealed only in poetry and dialects, which are interrelated. While the “natural sound” in the dialects indicates “shadowy, high language births”, the natural look directly through the great manifestations of poetry. Only in both can one find the nation, which in the meantime is torn apart in social reality.
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The works of art of German poetry rose to “very sublime regions”. At this level - for example in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's most beautiful poetry, in Hölderlin's last elegies and hymns - they are hardly reached by other nations. Even Milton remains behind. This is where the “Greek” of the “German language becomes effective, that extreme of free beauty.” The folk song related to it is connected “with the greatest boldness, sublimity and force of expression”, and whoever can ascend understandingly into these spheres “knows how the German language wields its wings. ”In prose too , the artist occasionally reaches the top. The end of Goethe's wandering years, for example, is written in this prose, and in Novalis and in some of Holderlin's late letters the magic of ultimate mastery occasionally shines through. The power of words surpasses everything that could be suspected without such examples and works as a “ghostly miracle”, as with Rembrandt the color and in Beethoven's later works the tone.
The reality of language, on the other hand, is deplorable. Only the "highest poets" dealt with it appropriately; it is questionable whether contemporary writers can do this. The language neglect shows itself in the newspaper, public speech and legal language. There is a lack of attention and a feeling for what is "right and possible", it is an eternal "child pouring out the bath."
The fatal language reality tells of the restless and shackled state of Germany. The nation and all of Europe have had a hard time , but no people are as vulnerable as the German, have so "many joints in their armor through which the dangerous can penetrate and penetrate the heart." Many went through the nation Divisions: Germany was already divided by religion , by the aftermath of the French Revolution , which abruptly severed all connections and replaced them with the “individual-spiritual, irresponsible”, was characterized by the separation of humanities and natural sciences - as was the language, which should actually unite everything. Now new concepts of faith "thrown into the masses with religious zeal" tore society apart. But just as in a storm the “exuberant transverse waves still cross the waves”, a new term now chases over thought, “atomizing what opposes it”, the term “of the sole validity of the present.” Hofmannsthal characterizes him as an “idol ", A state of" sensual bondage ". Whoever denies the spiritual tradition and surrenders only to the sensual ban the chimera of the moment, while the responsible, community-related higher thinking does not deny the tradition : “The communion of the present with the past, in the survival of the dead in us, to whom only we thank that the changing times are truly full of content and do not appear as an eternal harmony of senselessly repeated bars. "
Language only has to do with a true present, a present in which the past is annulled , what has passed is present and the moment does not count. With this tool the poet had to get from appearance to reality. The human being, when he speaks, confesses himself “as the being that cannot forget. Language is a great realm of the dead, unfathomably deep; therefore we receive the highest life from it. "
background
After the influential, the conservative effectiveness of Hofmannsthal introductory anthology "German narrators" from 1912 and the "German reading book" from 1922 Hofmannsthal again selected a series of prose texts that he considered significant. In this anthology he presented works by twelve German authors from the past three centuries, among them Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christoph Martin Wieland , Johann Gottfried Herder and Goethe, Jean Paul , Adam Müller and Jacob Grimm . Friedrich Schiller , Johann Georg Hamann and Arthur Schopenhauer had also formulated “deep thoughts about the secret of language”; after much thought, however, the chosen twelve seemed to him to be the "true informants about the great subject."
The desire for creative restoration expressed in the collections was for Hofmannsthal a moral mandate and not an esoteric-aesthetic, let alone romantic, escape from reality , even if in the introduction to the German narrators he indicated the similarity of his intentions with those of the Romantics and in the present trepidation recalled the darkness of Napoleon's time . As Joseph Görres wrote in 1831, the Romantics also wanted to “warm up and ... revive the frozen present” and also have an impact on the present by reviving the works of the past. The editions of the Wunderhorn , the German fairy tales , sagas and folk books as well as the study of Middle High German poetry served this purpose.
While Friedrich Schlegel had emphasized the high status of language and described it as "the most intimate and natural means of connection" that holds the nation together, it was also the essential link for Hofmannsthal. After other contexts had decayed, he saw it as his task to make language visible as a spiritual connection, the actual spiritual body of the nation, and to preserve it.
The orientalist Hans Heinrich Schaeder praised Hofmannsthal's choice. In it the levels of self-confidence of the German linguistic spirit would become evident in a wonderful way.
literature
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Collected works in ten individual volumes. Speeches and essays 1–3. Volume 3, Frankfurt a. M. 1979, ISBN 3596221684 .
Web link
Individual evidence
- ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Value and honor of the German language . Collected works in ten individual volumes, speeches and essays III. Fischer, Frankfurt 1980, p. 128
- ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Value and honor of the German language . Collected works in ten individual volumes, speeches and essays III. Fischer, Frankfurt 1980, p. 128
- ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Value and honor of the German language . Collected works in ten individual volumes, speeches and essays III. Fischer, Frankfurt 1980, p. 129
- ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Value and honor of the German language . Collected works in ten individual volumes, speeches and essays III. Fischer, Frankfurt 1980, p. 130
- ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Value and honor of the German language . Collected works in ten individual volumes, speeches and essays III. Fischer, Frankfurt 1980, p. 131
- ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Value and honor of the German language . Collected works in ten individual volumes, speeches and essays III. Fischer, Frankfurt 1980, p. 132
- ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Value and honor of the German language . Collected works in ten individual volumes, speeches and essays III. Fischer, Frankfurt 1980, p. 132
- ↑ Werner Volke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Rowohlt, Hamburg 1994, p. 139
- ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Value and honor of the German language . Collected works in ten individual volumes, speeches and essays III. Fischer, Frankfurt 1980, p. 130
- ↑ Werner Volke: Hugo von Hofmannsthal . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1994, p. 139
- ↑ Quoted from Werner Volke: Hugo von Hofmannsthal . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1994, p. 139
- ↑ Quoted from Werner Volke: Hugo von Hofmannsthal . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1994, p. 140
- ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Bibliography. Collected works in ten individual volumes, speeches and essays III. Fischer, Frankfurt 1980, p. 636