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The ''Deutsches Wörterbuch'' (; "German Dictionary"), abbreviated ''DWB'', is the largest and most comprehensive
dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...
of the
German language German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and Official language, official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switze ...
in existence.Synopsis of the ''Deutsches Wörterbuch''
at the Language Research Centre, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, retrieved 27 June 2012.
Clifford Wunderlich
''Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm''
, Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard University Divinity School, April 2012. retrieved 27 June 2012.
Encompassing modern
High German The High German languages (, i.e. ''High German dialects''), or simply High German ( ) – not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called "High German" – comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Ben ...
vocabulary in use since 1450, it also includes
loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...
s adopted from other languages into German. Entries cover the
etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...
, meanings, attested forms,
synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...
s, usage peculiarities, and regional differences of words found throughout the German speaking world. The dictionary's
historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of languages. Historical li ...
approach, illuminated by examples from
primary source In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an Artifact (archaeology), artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was cre ...
documents, makes it to German what the ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...
'' is to English.Thomas Schares: ''Untersuchungen zu Anzahl, Umfang und Struktur der Artikel der Erstbearbeitung des Deutschen Wörterbuchs von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm'', Trier: Universität Trier, 2006, p. 41-4
Abstract in EnglishFull article in German
retrieved 27 June 2012.
The first completed DWB lists over 330,000 headwords in 67,000 print columns spanning 32 volumes.''Das DWB''
at the Deutsches Wörterbuch research project website , retrieved 27 June 2012.
The ''Deutsches Wörterbuch'' was begun by the
Brothers Grimm The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm, Wilhelm (1786–1859), were Germans, German academics who together collected and published folklore. The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of Oral tradit ...
in 1838 and the initial volumes were published in 1854. Unfinished at the time of their deaths, the dictionary was finally completed by a succession of later scholars and institutions in 1961. In 1971, a 33rd supplement volume was published containing 25,000 additional entries. New research projects began in 2004 to expand and update the oldest parts of the dictionary to modern academic standards. Volumes A–F were planned for completion in 2012 by the Language Research Centre at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the
University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...
.


History


Beginnings

Beginning in 1830, Weidmann's Publishing House in
Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
repeatedly approached
Jacob Jacob, later known as Israel, is a Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions. He first appears in the Torah, where he is described in the Book of Genesis as a son of Isaac and Rebecca. Accordingly, alongside his older fraternal twin brother E ...
and Wilhelm Grimm with a proposal for a large new dictionary, spanning German vocabulary from
Martin Luther Martin Luther ( ; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, Theology, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and former Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinian friar. Luther was the seminal figure of the Reformation, Pr ...
to
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
. As busy professors at
Göttingen University Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...
, the
Brothers Grimm The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm, Wilhelm (1786–1859), were Germans, German academics who together collected and published folklore. The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of Oral tradit ...
rejected such a complex undertaking. A political scandal then dramatically changed matters. In 1837, the new King of Hanover, Ernst August, dissolved parliament and demanded oaths of allegiance from all civil servants. The brothers and five other professors refused and this so-called "
Göttingen Seven The Göttingen Seven () were a group of seven liberal professors at University of Göttingen. In 1837, they protested against the annulment of the constitution of the Kingdom of Hanover by its new ruler, King Ernest Augustus, and refused to swe ...
" were removed from their positions by royal order. The brothers then became political refugees in their former home in
Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in North Hesse, northern Hesse, in Central Germany (geography), central Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel (region), Kassel and the d ...
.


The Grimms (1838–1863)

By October 1838, the Brothers had a contract with Weidmann's and the prestigious Leipzig journal '' Allgemeine Zeitung'' published an announcement of the start of work on the DWB. The brothers initially expected the project to take ten years and produce 6–7 volumes. Circumstances seemed favorable because they were provided with staff and spacious apartments in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
at the invitation of the Prussian Minister in 1841. However, difficulties soon began. Not only did the acquisition of source excerpts take much longer than expected, but illness and the Revolution of 1848 interrupted the work. Eight volumes consisting of 1824 printed columns, a bibliography and a detailed preface were finally published on 13 April 1854. The first edition of the ''DWB'' exceeded the expectations of the brothers and the publishers. The press called it a "great national work" and its first shipments sold 10,000 copies. As it included words regarded as "indelicate," Jacob anticipated criticism of this and stated the following in the Foreword: :"This dictionary is not an immoral book, but a scientific undertaking. Even the
Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...
does not lack for words that are frowned upon in fine society." ::-
Jacob Grimm Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (4 January 1785 â€“ 20 September 1863), also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German author, linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He formulated Grimm's law of linguistics, and was the co-author of the ''Deutsch ...
, ''Vorwort 1. Band, S. XXXIV'' , Leipzig 1854 More volumes and updates were planned, but in their lifetime the brothers could only fully complete portions: Wilhelm Grimm wrote the articles to the letter D and died in 1859; Jacob, who was able to fully complete the letters A, B, C and E, died in 1863 while working on the entry for "Frucht" (fruit).


Post-Grimm era (1863–1907)

After the deaths of the Grimm Brothers, successive linguists continued the work. The first of these were close associates of the brothers, Rudolf Hildebrand and Karl Weigand. The ''DWB'' also became an affair of state when
Otto von Bismarck Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (; born ''Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck''; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898) was a German statesman and diplomat who oversaw the unification of Germany and served as ...
requested the
North German Confederation The North German Confederation () was initially a German military alliance established in August 1866 under the leadership of the Kingdom of Prussia, which was transformed in the subsequent year into a confederated state (a ''de facto'' feder ...
Federal Council to provide state funding in 1867. The young Germanist Moritz Heyne joined the project and became one of its most important contributors. By 1888 Heyne had invited graduate students to post articles under his supervision, turning the DWB into a true consortium for the first time. Included in this group was Rudolf Meißner who collaborated on the ''DWB'' for six decades (1889–1948). These ever-changing authors had different approaches and the work also proceeded very slowly. Hermann Wunderlich, Hildebrand's successor, only finished ''Gestüme'' to ''Gezwang'' after 20 years of work and 3000 columns of text. By 1905, academic professionals across Germany were unanimous: management of the DWB had to change or it would never be completed.


Academy of Sciences (1908–1961)

The prestigious
Prussian Academy of Sciences The Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences () was an academy established in Berlin, Germany on 11 July 1700, four years after the Prussian Academy of Arts, or "Arts Academy," to which "Berlin Academy" may also refer. In the 18th century, when Frenc ...
took on formal development of the ''DWB'' in 1908 with
Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...
remaining a central collection point for
source document A source document is a document in which data collected for a clinical trial is first recorded. This data is usually later entered in the case report form. The International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration ...
s. Operations were streamlined and salaried workers were provided through funding by the Empire. This period of reform and consolidation ended with
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
in 1914. By the early '20s the project was again close to collapse as German hyperinflation drove costs of production to over 5 billion marks. A donation of just $152 from the United States in 1923 saved the ''DWB'' from ruin.
Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (; ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quantum, quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial con ...
repeatedly advocated for the dictionary and funding was eventually taken up by the Emergency Association of German Science. Due to the efficiencies of a permanent staff of lexicographers as well as standardized policies for production, the period between 1931–1939 saw six times as much work completed as in the previous years. Nearly 100 years after its conception the DWB was permanently institutionalized and its conclusion was in sight.
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
then paralyzed the work. Employees were drafted into military service, resources were scarce, and the archived holdings were moved to a potash mine at Bernburg an der Saale to protect them from Allied bombing. The remaining three employees continued some work at Schloss Fredersdorf outside Berlin. After the war the USSR granted permission to move the archived materials from Fredersdorf and Bernburg back to Berlin in 1947. The new
German Academy of Sciences at Berlin The German Academy of Sciences at Berlin, , in 1972 renamed the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (''Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR (AdW)''), was the most eminent Research institute, research institution of East Germany (German Democratic Repub ...
then took on the work of the DWB. With the founding of
East Germany East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...
in 1949, communication between Berlin and Göttingen became more difficult. Despite these political complications, the ''DWB'' was finally published in January 1961, 123 years after its beginnings. It totaled 67,744 text columns, 320,000 keywords and weighed 84 kg. A 1971 supplement contains 25,000 additional entries and references to primary sources.


Later versions

Planning for a second edition had already begun in 1957, four years before the first edition was finished. The revision was intended especially to bring the oldest part of the ''Dictionary'', the letters A-F originally authored by the
Brothers Grimm The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm, Wilhelm (1786–1859), were Germans, German academics who together collected and published folklore. The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of Oral tradit ...
, up to date. It also was to be a cooperative effort between
East East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that ea ...
and
West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...
: the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in
East Berlin East Berlin (; ) was the partially recognised capital city, capital of East Germany (GDR) from 1949 to 1990. From 1945, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet occupation sector of Berlin. The American, British, and French se ...
would complete A-C, and the
University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...
in the West would complete D-F. The initial fascicles of this revision were published in 1965, but it remains unfinished today, with the letters B and C (originally assigned to the Berlin team) still in progress. The East German Berlin team was greatly hindered for political reasons because the SED authorities saw the DWB as a "bourgeois" lexicography project. In the course of the 1960s, most of its staff were taken off the project and used for other tasks. In 1984, the original 1961 version of the ''DWB'' was published in a paperback edition, now out of print. In 1999 a new paperback printing of all 33 volumes (weight 30 kg), published by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, became available ().


Digital edition

In 2004 the Competence Center for Electronic Text Processing and Publication in the Humanities at the University of Trier digitized the entire 300 million printed characters according to the method of double entry. The entire body was manually entered twice in China to eliminate error. A set of CD-ROMs of this digitization was released for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS. In this version spelling errors in the original were corrected. An online version of the first edition is also available at the University of Trier. The digitized first edition of the ''DWB'' met with lively interest. Every day the online version receives tens of thousands of hits and the CD-ROM of the first edition is now in its fourth updated distribution.


New edition

In 2006 the unfinished project to revise and update the A-F volumes to modern academic standards was resumed. The conclusion of this work (the B and C volumes) was finished in 2016; fascicles are appearing with the S. Hirzel Verlag as they are completed. However, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities announced that no revision of the volumes G to Z is planned. According to the Academic Director of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy, Wolf-Hagen Krauth, the sheer labor that would be required exceeds the possibilities for funding it in today's world.


See also

*
List of German dictionaries A list is a Set (mathematics), set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of t ...
** ''
Duden The Duden () is a dictionary of the Standard High German language, first published by Konrad Duden in 1880, and later by Bibliographisches Institut GmbH, which was merged into Cornelsen Verlag in 2022. The Duden is updated regularly with ...
'', a Standard German dictionary of the 1880s and the prescriptive source of German spelling ** '' Österreichisches Wörterbuch'', the official Austrian Standard German dictionary * ''Die Brüder Grimm: Pioniere deutscher Sprachkultur des 21. Jahrhunderts''. Herausgegeben von Jochen Bär ... t al. exte und Redaktion: Bernhard Roll, Andrea Rocha-Lieder * ''Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache'' (DWDS). A continually updated online dictionary incorporating many other dictionaries, including the DWB itself, such as the WDG, WDW, and Wolfgang Pfeifer's ''Etymologische Wörterbuch des Deutschen'', and more. The greater variety of sources makes the DWDS more widely used today compared to the DWS.


References


External links


''Das Deutsche Wörterbuch'' on the Internet

Official website of the ''Deutsche Wörterbuch'' Revision Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Deutsches Worterbuch German dictionaries Works by the Brothers Grimm