358 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 15380.
ΚΤ have so far read no book or letter,” says Luther in the preface to his version of the Pentateuch (1528), “in which the German language is properly handled. Nobody seems to care sufficiently for it ; and every preacher thinks he has a right to change it at pleasure, and to invent new terms.” Scholars preferred to write in Latin, and when they attempted to use the mother tongue, as Reuchlin and Melanchthon did occasionally, they fell far below in ease and beauty of expression.
Luther brought harmony out of this confusion, and made the modern High German the common book language. He chose as the basis the Saxon dialect, which was used at the Saxon court and in diplomatic intercourse between the emperor and the estates, but was bureaucratic, stiff, heavy, involved, dragging, and unwieldy... He popularized and adapted it to theology and religion. He enriched it with the. vocabulary of the German mystics, chroniclers, and poets. He gave it wings, and made it intelligible to the common people of all parts of Germany.
He adapted the words to the capacity of the Germans, often at the expense of accuracy. He cared more for the substance than the form. He turned the Hebrew shekel into a Silberling,? the Greek drachma and Roman denarius into a German
1 He says in his Tischreden (Erl. ed., vol. Ixii. 313): “Ich habe keine gewisse, sonderliche eigene Sprache im Deutschen |[i.e., no special dialect], sondern brauche der gemeinen deutschen Sprache, dass mich Oberlander und Niederlinder verstehen mogen. Ich rede nach der saichsischen Canzelei, welcher nachfolgen alle Fiirsten und Konige in Deutschland. Alle Reichstadte, Fiirstenhdfe schreiben nach der séchsischen und unseres Firsten Canzelei, darumb ists auch die gemeinste deutsche Sprache. Kaiser Mazimilian und Kurfirst Friedrich, Herzog zu Sachsen, etc., haben im romischen Reich die deutschen Sprachen [dialects] also in eine gewisse Sprache gezogen.”’ Formerly the Latin was the diplomatic language in Germany. Louis the Bavarian introduced the German in 1330. The founder of the diplomatic German of Saxony was Elector Ernst, the father of Elector Friedrich. See Wilibald Grimm, Gesch. der luth. Bibeliibersetzung (Jena, 1884), p. 24 sqq.
2 The same word silverling occurs once in the English version, Isa. 7: 23, and is retained in the R. V. of 1885. The German Probebdibel retains it in this and other passages, as Gen. 20:16; Judg. 9:4, ete.
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ὃ 63. CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF LUTHER’S VERSION. 359
Groschen, the quadrans into a Heller, the Hebrew measures into Scheffel, Malter, Tonne, Centner, and the Roman centurion into a Hauptmann. He substituted even undeutsch (!) for barbarian in 1 Cor. 14:11. Still greater liberties he allowed himself in the Apocrypha, to make them more easy and pleasant reading. He used popular alliterative phrases as Geld und Gut, Land und Leute, Rath und That, Stecken und Stab, Dornen und Disteln, matt und miide, ging und gabe. He avoided foreign terms which rushed in like a flood with the revival of learning, especially in proper names (as Melanchthon for Schwarzerd, Aurifaber for Goldschmid, Ccolampadius for Hausschein, Camerarius for Kammermeister). He enriched the vocabulary with such beautiful words as holdselig, Grottseligkett.
Erasmus Alber, a contemporary of Luther, called him the German Cicero, who not only reformed religion, but also the German language.
Luther’s version is an idiomatic reproduction of the Bible in the very spirit of the Bible. It brings out the whole wealth, force, and beauty of the German language. It is the first German classic, as King James’s version is the first English classic. It anticipated the golden age of German literature as represented by Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, —all of them Protestants, and more or less indebted to the Luther-Bible for their style. The best authority in Teutonic philology pronounces his language to be the foundation of the new High German dialect on account of its purity and influence, and the Protestant dialect on account of its freedom which conquered even Roman Catholic authors.?
1 See Grimm, Luther’s Uebersetzung der Apocryphen, in the ‘‘ Studien und Kritiken’’ for 1883, pp. 376-400. He judges that Luther’s version of Ecclesiasticus (Jesus Sirach) is by no means a faithful translation, but a model of a free and happy reproduction from a combination of the Greek and Latin texts.
2 “ Luther’s Sprache,’ says Jakob Grimm, in the Preface to his German Grammar, ‘‘ muss ihrer edeln, fast wunderbaren Reinheit, auch ihres ge-