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Justus Georg Schottelius (Latinized ''Justus-Georgius Schottelius''; born 23 June 1612 in Einbeck, died 25 October 1676 in
Wolfenbüttel Wolfenbüttel (; nds, Wulfenbüddel) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District. It is best known as the location of the internationally renowned Herzog August Library and for having the largest c ...
) was a leading figure of the German
Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
, best known for his publications on
German grammar The grammar of the German language is quite similar to that of the other Germanic languages. Although some features of German grammar, such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that of ...
, language theory and
poetics Poetics is the theory of structure, form, and discourse within literature, and, in particular, within poetry. History The term ''poetics'' derives from the Ancient Greek ποιητικός ''poietikos'' "pertaining to poetry"; also "creative" an ...
.


Life

Justus-Georg Schottelius was born in Einbeck, which in 1612 was a
Low German : : : : : (70,000) (30,000) (8,000) , familycolor = Indo-European , fam2 = Germanic , fam3 = West Germanic , fam4 = North Sea Germanic , ancestor = Old Saxon , ancestor2 = Middle L ...
-speaking area. He was the son of a Lutheran pastor; his mother came from a merchant family. Justus-Georg regularly styled himself ''Schottelius'', and this must be regarded as the correct form of his name, though after his death the de-Latinized form ''Schottel'' long persisted in scholarly writings and is still sometimes used. Surmounting the many upheavals of the
Thirty Years' War The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (80 ...
(1618–48) and the untimely death of his father, Schottelius managed to acquire a good education, notably at the Akademisches Gymnasium in
Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...
and at the universities of
Groningen Groningen (; gos, Grunn or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands. The ''capital of the north'', Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of t ...
,
Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...
,
Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
and
Wittenberg Wittenberg ( , ; Low Saxon language, Low Saxon: ''Wittenbarg''; meaning ''White Mountain''; officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg (''Luther City Wittenberg'')), is the fourth largest town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Wittenberg is situated on the Ri ...
. In 1640 he found employment as tutor to the children of Duke August the Younger of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1579–1666), including August's heir, Anton Ulrich (1633–1714). Schottelius wrote several plays for his pupils to perform, some with musical accompaniments composed by August's consort, Sophie Elisabeth, or in one case by
Heinrich Schütz Heinrich Schütz (; 6 November 1672) was a German early Baroque composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as one of the most important composers of the 17th century. He ...
(1585–1672). In 1646 he married Anna Margarete Eleonore Cleve, but she died the following year. His second wife, whom he married in 1649, was Anna Margarete Sobbe. During the 1640s and 1650s Schottelius rose to prominent administrative positions at court. He also had access to the magnificent ducal library at Wolfenbüttel, and he continued to reside in that town until his death. Schottelius quickly established himself in the early 1640s as a powerful protagonist of the German language. Admitted in 1642 to the leading patriotic language society, the ''
Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft The Fruitbearing Society (German Die Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, lat. ''societas fructifera'') was a German literary society founded in 1617 in Weimar by German scholars and nobility. Its aim was to standardize vernacular German and promote it a ...
'' or 'Fructifying Society', Schottelius took as his society name ''Der Suchende'' ('The Seeker'), engaging vigorously in its controversies on fundamentals of grammar and lexical purity. In 1645 or 1646 he became a member of the ''
Pegnesischer Blumenorden The (English: Pegnitz Flower Society; Latin: ; abbr. P.Bl.O.) is a German literary society that was founded in Nuremberg in 1644. It is the sole Baroque literary society that remains active today. The name derived from the river Pegnitz, which f ...
'', headed in Nürnberg by
Georg Philipp Harsdörffer Georg Philipp Harsdörffer (1 November 1607 – 17 September 1658) was a Jurist, Baroque-period German poet and translator. Born in Nuremberg, he studied law at Altdorf and Strassburg. He studied at the University of Strassburg under professo ...
(1607–1658) and later
Sigmund von Birken Sigmund von Birken (25 April 1626 – 12 June 1681) was a German poet of the Baroque. He was born in Wildstein, near Eger, and died in Nuremberg, aged 55. His pupil, Sibylle Ursula von Braunschweig-Lüneburg wrote part of a novel, ''Die Durchlau ...
(1626–1681). In 1646 he obtained a doctorate in laws at the
University of Helmstedt The University of Helmstedt (german: Universität Helmstedt; official Latin name: ''Academia Julia'', "Julius University"), was a university in Helmstedt in the Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel that existed from 1576 until 1810. History Founded ...
.


Achievements as a writer

Though he also distinguished himself in the fields of poetry, poetic theory and drama, Schottelius is chiefly memorable for his insights and achievements as a linguist. Acting like many of his contemporaries in a spirit of cultural and linguistic patriotism. he sought to raise the lowly status of German, to celebrate its high antiquity, to defend it against latter-day foreign influences, to re-examine it in the light of current linguistic theory, to promote its refinement and use as a communicative medium, and ultimately to inaugurate a new, prestigious epoch in the language. This process was known among contemporaries as ''Spracharbeit''. For his début as a language reformer, Schottelius chose a poetic medium. His ''Lamentatio Germaniae exspirantis'' (1640) attacked in stately alexandrines and lurid metaphors the corrupt state of the language, in particular the burgeoning over-use of foreign words. In a dying lament, the once fair nymph
Germania Germania ( ; ), also called Magna Germania (English: ''Great Germania''), Germania Libera (English: ''Free Germania''), or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman province of the same name, was a large historical region in north- ...
presents herself as a grotesque hag. Venerated down the ages, and even meriting the crown of Europe, she now prostitutes herself, begging words from French, Spanish, Italian and English.Schottelius reprinted the poem (with his own annotations) in ''Ausführliche Arbeit'', pp. 1012-1028. For all his potent rhetoric, Schottelius's linguistic purism was of a somewhat moderate kind, when compared with his contemporary
Philipp von Zesen Philipp von Zesen, also Filip Cösius or ''Caesius'' (originally Ph. Caesien, Filip Zesen, Filip von Zesen, in Latin Philippus Caesius à Fürstenau, Philippus Caesius à Zesen) (8 October 1619 O.S. – 13 November 1689 O.S.) was a German poet, ...
(1619–1689). But his championship of the German language was without equal.


''Ausführliche Arbeit Von der Teutschen HaubtSprache''

Schottelius's ''magnum opus'', his ''Ausführliche Arbeit Von der Teutschen HaubtSprache'', appeared in 1663. Running to over 1,500 pages, it incorporated substantial amounts of material that had appeared earlier, notably in his ''Teutsche Sprachkunst'' of 1641. Aimed at a learned, international readership, with much use of Latin alongside German, the ''Ausführliche Arbeit'' is a compendium of remarkable range and depth. Combining many discourse traditions, it embraces language history,
orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
,
accidence In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
,
word-formation In linguistics, word formation is an ambiguous term that can refer to either: * the processes through which words can change (i.e. morphology), or * the creation of new lexemes in a particular language Morphological A common method of word form ...
, idioms, proverbs, syntax, versification,
onomastics Onomastics (or, in older texts, onomatology) is the study of the etymology, history, and use of proper names. An ''orthonym'' is the proper name of the object in question, the object of onomastic study. Onomastics can be helpful in data mining, w ...
and other features, including a dictionary of more than 10,000 German root-words . Heading the work (pp. 1–170) are ten so-called eulogies (''Lobreden''): these are massively documented, programmatic statements characterising many aspects of the German language, past and present, and claiming for it the status of a 'cardinal' language (''Hauptsprache'') alongside Latin, Greek and Hebrew. One key argument here was the German language's rich lexical productivity, its ability to combine root-words (''Wurtzeln, Stammwörter'', mostly monosyllabic) and affixes (''Hauptendungen'') in ways which gave it unique and infinite powers of expression. To depict nature in all her variety, it had, for example, the means to name hundreds of different colours, as Schottelius showed in some detail. Seeking to demonstrate that the German language had a rational basis, Schottelius based his grammar partly on the Classical principle of
analogy Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject ( ...
, identifying (and sometimes even artificially creating) patterns of regularity or similarity in spelling and grammatical inflection. But as a grammarian he also acknowledged countless anomalies or irregularities in the language, and he respected written usage in what he regarded as its most exemplary forms. In the 17th century, German was still in the long and difficult process of becoming standardized or codified. Influential here was Schottelius's own conception of High German as a language transcending the many dialects, and as currently used in writing by 'learned, wise and experienced men' (''viri docti, sapientes et periti''). Schottelius argued distinctively that this idealized, supra-regional form of German could not be acquired spontaneously, and certainly not from speech: it had to be 'learnt through much diligence and toil' (''durch viel Fleis und Arbeit ... erlernet'').


Legacy

Schottelius’s truly 'comprehensive' work dominated the German linguistic field until
Johann Christoph Gottsched Johann Christoph Gottsched (2 February 1700 – 12 December 1766) was a German philosopher, author and critic of the Enlightenment. Biography Early life He was born at Juditten (Mendeleyevo) near Königsberg (Kaliningrad), Brandenburg-Pr ...
(1700-1766), whose authoritative grammars appeared from 1748 onwards. Schottelius's wider legacy has been variously assessed, but it lies mainly in the development of linguistic ideas, with measurable influences to be found in early grammars of Danish, Dutch, Swedish and Russian, and in theoretical writings on these and other languages.


Major works

* * * * * 1995 Reprint


References


Bibliography

* * (on cultural patriotism pp. 103–119; on Schottelius pp. 119–127) * (Facsimile of 1663 edition.) * * * * *


Further reading

* * * * *


External links

*
Digitised works of Schottelius
in the
Herzog August Library The Herzog August Library (german: link=no, Herzog August Bibliothek — "HAB"), in Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony, known also as ''Bibliotheca Augusta'', is a library of international importance for its collection from the Middle Ages and ear ...
, , Wolfenbüttel
Schottelius family tree
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schottel, Justus Georg 1612 births 1676 deaths People from Einbeck German language Linguists of German Grammarians from Germany 17th-century linguists Baroque writers