Regarding the building of Solomon’s Temple (3 Kings vi.), he says: “We shall have much trouble over this horrid building. I should like to know where the seventy or eighty thousand carpenters with their axes came from. Did the whole land ever hold so many inhabitants? It is a queer business. Maybe the Jews corrupted the text. They cannot have had any carts but must have carried everything. I wish I had done with the book. I am a very unwilling builder at Solomon’s Temple.... It was finished about Pentecost. It must have been very lofty, some hundred cubits in height; our tower here is not much over sixty cubits.”
Now and then Luther brings the words of the Bible into relation with his own experiences. This he does especially in the minutes of the meetings held for the revision of the Psalter, which, of course, lends itself more easily to such application. In one passage (Ps. xviii. [xvii.] 15) he says, referring to his “combats”: “At the Coburg I saw my devils flying over the forest.” When discussing Ps. lxxiv. (lxxiii.) he lets fall the words: “I will send this as a farewell to my Papists and hope they will howl Amen to it, if God so will. Amen.” Of Ps. ciii. (cii.) he remarks: “I recite this Psalm daily when I am merry; it is a fine, cheerful Psalm for a poor soul.” Of Isaias xi. he says, extolling the prophet: “No prophet speaks so grandly as ‘Jesaia,’” and, on 1 Kings iii., again having a fling at the Papists: “Things went on pretty much the same as they do in Popery; nobody studied and the Bible was thrust aside.”
Only excerpts of the records of these meetings have so far appeared in print. They are, however, to be published in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works.
Besides the minutes, a small copy of both Testaments with notes which Luther made use of in his revision has been discovered at Jena. It is an edition printed in 1538-9, or possibly in 1540, then the most recent edition. The notes show a great many alterations in the text, chiefly such as had been agreed upon at the meetings, in Genesis, for instance, no less than two hundred. The entries, so far as they represent the result of the conferences, constitute the link between Rörer’s minutes and the new edition subsequently published. The alterations in the latter seem to be taken, sometimes from the minutes, sometimes from Luther’s copy. “The Jena Old Testament,” says O. Reichert, is “a document that exemplifies Luther’s way of working; it proves that he felt he had never done enough for his best work, that he was always busy at it and was indefatigable in his efforts to produce a German Bible from the original text.”
The outcome of the work of revision was a great improvement in the Wittenberg Bible of 1540 and 1541 printed by Hans Lufft. Another edition, dating from 1542, embodied in the main most of the new emendations. The edition most highly prized is, however, the last that appeared during Luther’s lifetime, viz. that of 1545, which also contains new corrections. It has been called the “editio typica” of Luther’s Bible, though, possibly, that of 1546, with new alterations by Rörer, to which Luther is supposed to have given his approval, should be regarded as such.
The detailed account of this revision is not the only witness we have to the care and pains Luther bestowed on the work, for we have also the recently discovered manuscript copy of his translation, which Luther sent to the printers. The latter consists of portions of the Old Testament written with his own hand: Part of the Book of Judges, then Ruth, Kings, Paralipomena, Esdras, Nehemias and Esther, also Job, the Psalter, Proverbs, the Preacher and the Canticle of Canticles. They were published by the Magdeburg pastor, E. Thiele, in the Weimar edition from two MSS. at Zerbst and Berlin. Here we see how assiduously Luther corrects and deletes, how frequently he wrestles, so to speak, after the correct expression and cannot at times satisfy himself. Luther’s manuscript copy of the New Testament has not so far been discovered.
In consequence of the above publications the examination into the origin of the text of Luther’s Bible and into the principles which determined its compilation enters upon a new phase. In the same way the significance of the text for the history of the German language stands out more clearly because such discoveries bear the strongest testimony to Luther’s untiring endeavours to adapt himself to the true German mode of expression, to his dexterity in finding synonyms and to his skill in construing.
On the Language and the Learning Displayed in Luther’s Bible
The excellence of Luther’s translation of the Bible from the point of view of its German is unquestionable.
For, what the author above all aimed at, viz. a popular rendering of the text which should harmonise with the peculiarities of the German language, that he certainly achieved. Through his Bible, too, owing to its general use throughout so large a portion of the nation, he exerted a greater influence on the upbuilding of the German tongue than by all his other vernacular works.
In his other writings, in which he was ever striving to improve his mode of speech, we may often find real models of good German, which, consciously or not, had a widespread influence on the language. In the case of his Bible, however, this was far more noticeable, for not only was his language there more polished, but the fact of the text being so frequently committed to memory, quoted from the pulpit and surrounded by that halo which befits the Word of God, helped to extend its sway.
Not only did he take infinite pains to translate aright such phrases as ring unfamiliar to Western ears, but he was also assisted by his happy gift of observation and his knack of catching the true idiom. His habit of noting the words that fell from the lips of the populace, or, as he says, of “looking into the jaw of the man in the street,” was of the utmost service to him in his choice and use of terms. “No German talks like that,” “that is not put ‘germanice,’” “the German tongue won’t stand that,” and similar utterances, frequently recur in the minutes of the conferences when he is finding fault with the renderings proposed by others or even with his own earlier ones.
It was fortunate for him, that, as his medium of intercourse, he chose to use a kind of German, not indeed unknown before, but, which, with his rare gifts, he exploited with greater independence and vigour. Wittenberg was favourably situated from the geographical point of view, and the students who flocked thither from every part of Germany were ever bringing Luther fresh elements, thus enabling him to select among the various dialects what was common to all. The short journeys he made and his correspondence with so many people in every part of Germany were also of assistance to him.
“I have,” Luther says himself, “no particular, special German language of my own, but I use the common German language so that both the Upper and the Lower Lands may understand me. I write according to the speech of the Saxon Chancery which is used by all the princes and kings of Germany. All the Imperial Cities and Royal Courts in writing make use of the language of the Saxon Chancery and of our sovereign; hence this is the kind of German most widely spoken. The Emperor Maximilian, the Elector Frederick and the Duke of Saxony, etc., have fused all the different modes of German speech in the whole Roman Empire into a uniform language.” Hence, on his own admission, the language was not new. “The language of Upper Germany,” he says, “is not the real German; it is broad and uncouth and sounds harsh. But the Saxon tongue flows quietly and easily.”
When we try to determine in detail the language of which Luther made use, and how much he actually did to further its development, we are met by great difficulties. German philologists have not yet been able thoroughly to explore this domain, because so little is known of the German prints of the 15th century, of the manuscripts and the various groups of writers. Protestant theologians have often contented themselves with a few quotations from certain German philologists and historians, which exaggerate the case in Luther’s favour. Of such exaggerations Protestant scholars had been guilty even in the 16th century; for instance, the German preacher and grammarian, Johann Clajus, says, in 1578: “As the Holy Ghost spoke pure Hebrew through Moses and Greek through the Apostles, so He spoke pure German through His chosen instrument Martin Luther. It would not otherwise have been possible for a
man to speak so accurately.”
In answer to the question, “What is the task imposed upon learned research by Luther’s Bible?” Risch, an authority on this subject, remarks: “The historical connection of the language used by Luther in his Bible with the German language of yore has still to be brought to light”; the studies undertaken so far have dealt too exclusively with one particular side of the question, viz. with the vowel sounds used by Luther and by his predecessors; too much stress has also been laid on the Middle-High German diphthongs (î, û, ìu[ü], becoming ei, au, eu). Luther’s relations with the past in the matter of the construction of sentences and arrangement of words, and more particularly in his vocabulary and the meaning he gives to his words, have not been set forth scientifically enough, though abundant material for so doing is to be found in Grimm’s German dictionary, in Hermann Paul’s and elsewhere.
Then again, as Paul Pietsch points out in the introduction to the 1st volume of Luther’s Bible in the Weimar series, we have not been sure hitherto even of the exact text of Luther’s translation. Owing to the divergencies in the text it was “not possible, with the help of the various editions scattered throughout the world, to arrive at any final opinion concerning the language employed in the Bible or the alterations it underwent.” Hence, only on the completion of the Weimar series shall we be able to form “an adequate idea of the position Luther’s translation holds in the history of New High German.”
Finally, there is still some doubt as to what Luther actually meant by his statement concerning the German of the Chanceries of Saxony, the Empire and the Imperial Cities being the model on which his own language was based, and as to how far he was speaking the truth. We must in all probability go much further back than the time of the Emperor Maximilian of whom Luther speaks, viz. to the Chancery of the Luxemburg kings of Bohemia, for it was the latter who established, about the middle of the 14th century, a sort of New High German which later on spread to Silesia, to Upper and Lower Lusatia, and, then, thanks to the Emperor Frederick III, to the Chancery of the Hapsburgs and to those of the Saxon Electorate, Hesse and Mayence. In those early days the new language was a mixture of the dialects of Upper and Central Germany, of those of Austria and of Meissen.
Chancery German, however, restricted as it was by its very nature within certain well-defined limits and hampered by the stiffness of the Court, was not likely to prove of much service to Luther, who sought a language which should be understood by the people and be full of strength and variety. Hence we are driven to surmise that it was rather in the homes of the people that he sought his language, turning to good account his gift for coining what he needed from the various German dialects.
As regards the state of the language in Germany at that time, E. Gutjahr has recently endeavoured to prove that the efforts at colonisation and the movement of the people, more particularly from the 12th to the 14th century, had paved the way in Saxony for the rise and spread of a new, common language (New High German), and that in towns like Halle a new patrician type of language had sprung up which Luther had only to assimilate. In his “Anfänge der neuhochdeutschen Sprache vor Luther” (1910), the author gives us an outline of the conclusions he has reached and which he hopes to set forth at greater length later. Whether he will succeed in making out his case remains, however, to be seen.
The language of the Saxon Chancery was, according to Gutjahr, even in Luther’s day, not merely the “polite language of general intercourse,” but one in which all the German Courts were versed, the Imperial, Austrian one of Maximilian, as much as that of the Saxon Electorate under Frederick the Wise. From this language, “into which he infused new elements taken from the mouth of the people,” Luther forged a mighty weapon for his work, being all the more readily led to do so seeing that the “reforming movement found its mainstay among the patrician classes of the Saxon Electorate.” Nevertheless we must not assume the existence in Luther’s day of any common written language in the modern sense. The foundation for such a common language had indeed been laid, but as yet it did not exist. Before our nation could lay claim to a common language of its own — our Modern High German as written — a long time had still to elapse.
The language used by Luther in his Bible was made still more widely known owing to the work being at once reprinted even where other dialects prevailed, though as a rule some alterations were made to bring it into line with the idiom in use; at times the printers did no more than append a short vocabulary explaining such Saxon phrases as might be strange to the reader. In this way the new Bible, the language of which was so admirably suited to become a common one, penetrated everywhere, even into out of the way districts where the most divergent dialects obtained.
Its influence was all the more important now that small principalities were springing up at the expense of the unity of Germany and threatened the language with further disintegration. The Lutherans were the first to perceive and work against this danger, though the Catholics were by no means unmindful of it too. Catholics, too, sought to take advantage of the translation, and, in some cases, even went too far in this. Luther once declares in his usual vein: “Our opponents read it more than do our own people”; he also mentions that Duke George had said: “Let the monk finish translating the Bible into German and then get himself gone.”
What in the case of Protestants favoured the influence Luther’s Bible exerted on the language, was, on the one hand the profound interest aroused in the reader by his inspiring pen, and, on the other, its appearance at a time when, though the art of printing had been invented, the whole world, and more particularly Germany, judged from a literary, theological standpoint, was still lying to a large extent fallow and was thus more readily dominated by such a work as his, and that not merely as regards the matter but also as regards the style. Men of learning, owing to humanistic influences, wrote almost exclusively in Latin. The use of the German language for theological and religious subjects, save in sermons and popular writings, was something unusual; in fact, such a thing was rather discountenanced owing largely to the publication of German works which had made a wrong use of Scripture.
In Lutheranism the New High German of the Bible found its way not only into educated, ecclesiastical circles but also to the common folk, into whose ears the preachers assiduously dinned countless favourite texts in their new form; it also became familiar to the teachers and children in the schools. No more powerful lever for the furtherance of New High German could have been found. A century after, New High German had become the language of the churches and schools in the regions subject to Luther’s influence, whilst the South German and Low German dialects had largely lost their hold.
When all is said, however, the secret of such success is not to be entirely understood unless we also take into account the religious position Luther occupied in the eyes of his followers. All who venerated him as having thrown a new light on religion, valued and honoured the language used by a mind so imperious, so strong and versatile, and, when it so pleased, so sympathetic. H. Böhmer says very truly of the old German Protestants: “Luther became for the Germans the authority on speech because he was their supreme authority on faith and personal conduct. Had he not been a religious reformer and had he not bequeathed to Evangelical Germany in his Bible a book, which, on account of its religious importance was bound to be looked upon as a model of language, he would never have exercised so powerful an influence on the written and spoken language.”
Nevertheless, to assert, that, by his German Bible and his other writings Luther was the actual founder of New High German is to go too far, quite apart from the fact that German, as now written, is no longer identical with the German of Luther’s Bible and other writings. We cannot take seriously Grimm’s assertions that “New High German may in point of fact be called the Protestant dialect,” or that “Luther’s language, owing to its noble, almost marvellous purity and its mighty influence, was both the germ and the foundation of the New High German tongue.”
Two other considerations will serve still further to curtail the importance of Luther’s services to the German tongue.
First of all it must be pointed out that many very coarse elements found their way into his popular works, and thus, unhappily, into the written language, and, secondly, that a large number of words and phrases peculiar to South Germany and which were accordingly unknown to Luther, find, for this reason, no place in works, with the result that the German language suffered.
We may speak with less reserve of the merits of the new translation so far as it is based on the original languages of the Bible, and on the Latin Vulgate then in general use. Even before Luther started on his work attention had been called to the original text; indeed, as it happens, the scholar who was the primary cause of Luther’s studying the original language was his Catholic opponent, Erasmus, who himself brought out the Greek edition of the New Testament. To Luther, however, belongs the honour of having been the first to tread the new philological paths with a German version.
In his somewhat hurried version of the New Testament he used the Greek text as well as the Vulgate. In the same way, in his translation of the Old Testament, he went back to the original so far as his knowledge of Hebrew allowed, and, where this was insufficient, sought the help of others.
Collected Works of Martin Luther Page 832
