Michael Schwarzbach-Dobson’s “Disappearing Words of the Middle Ages”

2023-12-25 17:30:44

The Middle Ages of bold knights and noble lords of the castle lives on in our vocabulary: not only the “knight” itself or the “tournament,” but also words like “polite” or “adventure” come from this time. Many of them came from French – sometimes mediated via Dutch – into Middle High German. They are the relics of an entire conceptual world that sank along with the culture of the Christian, civilized warrior ideal to which it gave expression. It is preserved in historical dictionaries and the traditional works of Middle High German poets such as Wolfram von Eschenbach or Hartmann von Aue.

But this literature hardly plays a role in German lessons – even in high schools – and if it does, then only in a New High German translation. It’s not just Middle High German classical music that is hardly present in general language and literary knowledge anymore. What is disappearing is the awareness that contemporary German has grown out of earlier language levels – even if the media hypertrophy of modern communication would have deeply disturbed the knight-poets of the Middle Ages and their audiences.

Michael Schwarzbach-Dobson, a German scholar at the University of Cologne, is now bringing their world back to life in a highly entertaining and enlightening way. He does this using eighty Middle High German words that no longer exist in contemporary language and in which the different facets of the era are crystallized. They are not strictly scientifically structured dictionary articles, but rather short stories. The words serve as starting points for excursions into linguistic and cultural landscapes that sometimes seem very familiar to us and other times very foreign. The beautiful design and bright colors of the fairytale-like illustrations increase the joy of traveling.

Many words continue to exist in a hidden form

The basis for the selection of words, which are grouped according to topics such as chivalry, family, religion, everyday life, crafts or love, are primarily the courtly epics and songs. This is due to the source situation: it was primarily educated members of the secular nobility who wrote in German. Clerics limited themselves to Latin, and farmers and artisans – the vast majority of the population – could neither read nor write. Their living conditions have only come down to us through literary filters.

Michael Schwarzbach-Dobson: “Disappearing words of the Middle Ages”. A search for clues. : Image: Greven Verlag

Consequently, the topic of “knighthood and combat” takes up the most space. The “griezwart”, for example, leads right into the world of shimmering armor and splintering lances. If you think of the groundskeeper, you wouldn’t be wrong. The Middle High German “griez”, which lives on in today’s “semolina”, did not refer to coarsely ground grain at the time, but to sand. The battlefields were sprinkled with this to absorb the blood and keep the surface grippy. The – literally translated – “Sandwart” was a supervisor and judge in duels.

Here and with the other words, the author does not limit himself to a brief explanation of the meaning, but also describes the different contexts in which the word occurs. The “griezwart” also figures as a metaphor for death, which separates the fighters from each other and takes the defeated one with it. Despite all the entertainment, philological accuracy and source criticism are not neglected: the reader learns that the duel to decide legal disputes was a popular literary motif, but one cannot simply draw conclusions from this about the reality of the High Middle Ages. It is questionable whether such fights were really a normal part of the administration of justice.