Goethe Wörterbuch, Vierter Band, 7. Lieferung: Hauptunterricht-herandrohen (review)

258 Book Reviews The question is: does a new printing of Fischer-Lamberg make sense, even so thoroughly unrevised? assuming, of course, that the passage of twenty-five years, der Zahn der Zeit, in effect, makes the volumes, tf desirable, otherwise unobtainable . In fact the three most important recent Goethe pubUshing projects have not, even aU together, been able to render the Fischer-Lamberg obsolete. The extensive Frankfurter Ausgabe pubUshed m the Klassiker Verlag does not even contain a section devoted to Young Goethe, organizing itsetf instead in the more or less time-honored manner by genres. Even though it contains most or aU of the correspondence from the Young Goethe period, it does not include aU of aU the other categories of writing offered at their fuUest Ui Fischer-Lamberg. (It does, however, offer a very useful volume with the two versions of Werther on facing pages.) The first two volumes of the Hanser Münchner Ausgabe (1.1 and 1.2) are labeled Der junge Goethe 1757-1775, and of course the commentary and bibUographical information are more up-to-date than Fischer-Lamberg, but the Münchner's two volumes are nowhere near as complete. The third, Der junge Goethe in seiner Zeit, edited by Karl Eibl et al. in the Insel Verlag in 1998, is the nearest thing to a solid competitor for Fischer-Lamberg, and at a super price to be recommended to one and aU (less than DM 100 at the time!). The two volumes of text do not contain anywhere near the complete Young Goethe, but the accompanying CD-ROM expands the offering to (it claims) the whole Young Goethe and makes it possible to compare aU versions of the texts (including even later revisions), while also presenting important background aids Uke the Luther Bible and Hederich's mythological lexicon. Unfortunately, Ui spite of aU that, there is something about being able to flip through the pages of a reaUy complete edition like Fischer-Lamberg that simply cannot be duplicated on CDROM , nor do the Insel CD-ROM or the two text volumes contain as much commentary and other assistance as Fischer-Lamberg. Consequently any serious scholar and certainly every Ubrary should have both, and tf anyone is still missing Fischer-Lamberg now is the time to acquire it! University of California, Irvine Thomas P. Saine Goethe Wörterbuch, hrsg. von der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen und der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Vierter Band, 7. Lieferung: Hauptunterricht —herandrohen. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 2002; 8. Lieferung: herandrücken—herumjagen, 2003. Not many of us who visit Berlin these days and enjoy a stroU across its magnificent Gendarmenmarkt are probably aware that the imposing old buUding at the corner of Jäger- and Markgrafenstraße that serves as the headquarters of the Berlin-Brandenburgüche Akademie der Wissenschaften also houses one of the three Arbeitsstellen of the Goethe-Wörterbuch, the "Leiter" of which is Michael Niedermeier. (Two additional centers are located in Hamburg and in TübUigen, administered respectively by the Göttingen and the Heidelberg Academies of Science.) I am tempted to speak of "our Goethe-Wörterbuch" because, in a certain sense, this superb tool is taüor-made for aU serious students of Goethe and, for that matter, of the Goethezeit itsetf. Goethe scholars have no better—no more trustworthy—friend than this truly mind-boggling dictionary that endeavors to record and to analyse the vocabulary of Goethe in its awesome entirety. In the lexicographical jargon that seems to be de rigeur with enterprises of such magnitude, this is termed an Autoren-Bedeutungswörterbuch. Goethe Yearbook 259 We have assumed aU along, I suppose, that Goethe's command of German was second to none and that his work—UnguisticaUy more fertile than anyone's oeuvre since Luther—represents a seismic shift m the development of the language , whose aftershocks continue to shape and to animate the vocabulary of our own time. StUl, we can't help being surprised when confronted with the hard numbers. As the worthy lexicographers in Berlin, Hamburg, and Tübingen teU us, Goethe's vocabulary comprises some 90,000...