Die althochdeutsche und altsächsische Glossographie: Ein Handbuch (review)

Rolf Bergmann and Stefanie Stricker have devoted much of their productive scholarly careers to the study of Old High German glossography, and the importance of their contributions to this field—I hesitate to call it a subfield, since the glosses exist in more than 1,300 manuscripts—cannot be overestimated. The work under review has appeared not five years after their indispensable magnum opus, the six-volume Katalog der althochdeutschen und altsächsischen Glossenhandschriften (2005). Whereas the latter work provides facts and details about Old High German glosses and the manuscripts in which they appear, Die althochdeutsche und altsächsische Glossographie: Ein Handbuch supplies interpretations and discussions of this information. They are companion pieces, produced by the same publisher, that belong together in your university library or even your home office, should you be able to afford them.

The Handbuch consists of ninety-six articles, organized into twelve thematic sections (pp. 1–1677), and concludes with six useful indices: an Autorenverzeichnis, Abbildungsverzeichnis, Abkürzungsverzeichnis, Literaturverzeichnis, Sachregister, and a Handschriftenregister (pp. 1677–1878). At nearly one hundred pages (pp. 1685–1779), the bibliography is a valuable resource of its own. The twelve thematic sections of the book are the following: (I) Einleitung, (II) Geschichte der Glossenforschung, (III) Dokumentationsteil, (IV) Kodikologie und Paläographie, (V) Aspekte volkssprachiger Textglossierung, (VI) Formen und Inhalte von Glossaren, (VII) Grenz- und Übergangsbereiche, (VIII) Auswertung der Glossen: Grammatik und Wortschatz, (IX) Sprachgeographische Auswertung der Glossen, (X) Sprachhistorische Auswertung der Glossen, (XI) Desiderate und Perspektiven, and (XII) Glossen und Kulturgeschichte. Fifty-one of the articles were written by either Bergmann or Stricker, who commissioned twenty-six colleagues, known for their expertise in certain areas, to complete the remaining forty-five (article 20 is a reprinted excerpt from Heinrich Götz’s Beiträge zur Bedeutungserschließung). Nicolaus Henkel, for example, contributed an article on glosses and medieval pedagogy; Wolfgang Kleiber on Otfrid von Weißenburg as a glossator; Petrus Tax on the Old High German glosses of Boethius; Wolfgang Haubrichs on the Pariser Gespräche, and so on. An exhaustive judgment of this book will unfold in the future of scholarship. For now it will be enough to provide a few summary remarks.

The introduction, in three articles, outlines the structure of the book, the documentation of the Glossenhandschriften, and various ways of defining and understanding the term Glosse. A methodological comparison with Rudolf Schützeichel’s Althochdeutscher und altsächsischer Glossenwortschatz (2004) is helpful because it clarifies certain documentational differences between Schützeichel’s dictionary and the Handbuch (and the Katalog). An evaluation of Gerhard Köbler’s Altdeutsch: Katalog aller allgemein bekannten Handschriften . . . (2005) struck me as unnecessarily acerbic (the dignity of a duel lies in the equality of its participants). The final definition proposed for Glosse encompasses Textglossen and Glossarglossen: “Unter althochdeutschen Glossen verstehen wir interlinear oder marginal lateinischen Texten beigefügte beziehungsweise in lateinische Texte integrierte Einzelwörter oder Wortgruppen, die eine Übersetzung oder Erklärung lateinischer Wörter eines Textes oder Glossars in althochdeutscher Sprache leisten” (p. 32).

The second section offers two sketches, one on the Entdeckungsgeschichte of Old High German glosses from Wolfgang Lazius (1557) to the current discoveries of overlooked Griffelglossen (inkless glosses made with a stylus), and the other on certain trends in the scholarship from its beginnings to today, touching upon the work of Graff, Sievers, Baesecke, and other well-known names. This discussion progresses quickly from one step to the next, but Bergmann announces from the outset that his treatment will be brief and that a comprehensive study of the history of this scholarship remains to be written. Section III is a detailed engagement with the information provided in various indices of the Katalog—on authors and works, the chronology and provenance of the manuscripts, and the numerical distribution of glosses among them. There are many pages of tabulated statistics, and commentary is always provided. The fourth section...