Dictionary of Historical German Legal Terms

Dictionary of Historical German Legal Terms (DWR)

“The legal dictionary is a mighty tree, the trunk of which stands firmly on the
legal-historical earth, but underneath the border its roots reach far into the
neighbouring earth, to draw nourishment there; its branches, however, also
spread far over the neighbouring fences, and it thus provides the neighbours
with fruits and shade as well.”

(Eberhard von Künßberg, legal anthropologist).

From the editor of the Dictionary, Andreas Deutsch, in the Fifth International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology:

“(The Dictionary of Historical German Legal Terms) is not an encyclopaedic lexicon. You will not find explanations relating to a legal institution or a legal concept in it, dealt with under one umbrella term. Rather, it is primarily a language dictionary. It includes all juridical terms detectable as such – with explanation of their various meanings, which are justified on the basis of excerpts from source texts. It focuses exclusively on the older legal language.

When the project was founded – at the end of the 19th century – the scientists of legal history and of linguistics both were convinced that a dictionary of older German legal terms could not be created without covering the terms of all Western-Germanic languages and dialects at
the same time. So they initiated a “Dictionary of historical German and Western-Germanic Legal Terms” . And despite some limitations, implemented particularly in the 1970s, that is what it still is.

In order for a compound to be added to the (Dictionary of Historical German Legal Terms), the first verifiable evidence of the word must date from the year 1700 at the latest. In order for a
simplex to be included in the dictionary, the first verifiable evidence of the word must date from 1815 at the latest. If the first record of a term does not lie within the aforementioned time limits but still dates from before 1835, a short reference to the term will be created, which will not be printed but published in the online version.

Linguistic framework

The linguistic framework of the project is the “German language”, to which – according to the concept of the 19th century – the whole of the West Germanic language family belongs, as Jacob Grimm has laid down in his introduction to the “German dictionary” .

This includes vernacular words in the Latin texts of the Germanic tribes of the migration period, the so-called “Leges barbarorum” (450-800).

It also encompasses:
• Old English (500 – 1100)
• Old High German (600 – 1050)
• Lombardic (650 – 1000)
• Old Dutch (700 – 1200)
• Old Saxon (800 – 1200)
• Old Frisian (800 – 1500)
• Middle High German (1050 – 1350)
• Middle Dutch (in 1200 – 1500/1600)
• Middle Low German (1200 – 1650)
• Early New German (1350 – 1650), and

• New High German (from 1650).

Content framework

As for the content of the dictionary, the Dictionary of Historical German Legal Terms logically covers primarily the technical language of the law. However, the Dictionary of Historical German Legal Terms pays equal attention the legally relevant part of everyday language.

This includes for example all coins, weights and measures. Likewise, all professions are covered as far as they are connected with official or other legal functions or organized in a guild or similar association. It seems that the latter is of interest in particular to name researchers, because a lot of professions that have disappeared have been preserved in surnames.

The European concept of the Dictionary: the geographical framework

This linguistic framework automatically entails a geographical framework, which might exceed that of most other European linguistic dictionaries.
Indeed, an evaluation of the regional information of the documents in our database has proved, that the sources dealt with in the Dictionary originate from various European countries.

Naturally the most important part of the sources treated in the dictionary originates from the still German-speaking countries Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

But the mainly Middle Dutch and Old Frisian legal sources (See also the latest publication about this topic: Anne Tjerk Popkema, Die Bedeutung des Altfriesischen für die Erforschung des germanischen Rechtswortschatzes und vice versa, in: Andreas Deutsch, Das Deutsche Rechtswörterbuch – Perspektiven, Heidelberg 2010, pp. 73-90) from the Netherlands and the Luxembourgian texts from Luxembourg are of scarcely less importance.

Also important are the Old English sources. And as for Great Britain, the writings of the Hanseatic merchants have to be mentioned as well, who had, for instance, a remarkable settlement in London.

Concerning Belgium, France and Italy, the formerly German-speaking areas have entered the Dictionary of Historical German Legal Terms, of course. In France those were above all Alsace and Lorraine, where the indigenous population maintains an Alemannic dialect even today, which can already be found in many texts from the Middle-Ages and early modern times. Italian sources covered in the Dictionary of Historical German Legal Terms not only originate
from South Tyrol and the adjoining territories, but also from the Lombard.
(…) the mixing of the population was particularly intense in countries belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Thus it is not surprising that numerous German language legal texts have been preserved especially from Bohemia, Slovakia and Slovenia. From Hungary there are, above all, the laws on mining that are worth mentioning.

Furthermore a very large number of dictionary sources are also from Poland – and also east of the former German-speaking areas. This can be explained not only by the great importance of the Magdeburg law in Eastern Europe, but also by the commitment of the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Order in this area. To be added from a later era are the laws of the Prussian crown.

A special role is played by the Baltic region – especially Estonia and Latvia: For centuries, the written language there was solely German. Since the Baltic States regained their independence from Russia in 1991, the exploration of the Baltic-German sources has played a crucial role in rediscovering the identity of those countries. Numerous publications have already referred to the specific role of the Dictionary of Historical German Legal Terms for research on the Baltic-German vocabulary. At present, the Baltic-German language has not been covered more broadly in any other dictionary. See, e.g., Ulrich Kronauer/Thomas Taterka (ed.), Baltisch-europäische Rechtsgeschichte und Lexikographie, Akademiekonferenzen 3, Heidelberg 2009; Ineta Balode, Baltisch-Deutsch im DRW, in: Andreas Deutsch (ed.), Das Deutsche Rechtswörterbuch – Perspektiven, Heidelberg 2010, pp. 91-126; Hermann Blaese/Dietmar Willoweit, Art. „Baltische Länder“, in: Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte I, 2. Aufl., Berlin 2008, column 414-419, and Ulrich Kronauer, Vortrag bei der Ãœbergabe eines Exemplars des Deutschen Rechtswörterbuchs an die Akademische Bibliothek Lettlands, Riga, 6. Mai 2005; in: Triangulum. Germanistisches Jahrbuch für Estland, Lettland und Litauen 11 (2005), pp. 195-201.

It remains to be mentioned that as supporting documents passages from almost every other European country have been adopted as records in the dictionary. By now there is even a record from Portugal. A lot of these records are reports on life at court in the respective countries or the correspondence of merchants.

History of the Dictionary: A European project from the beginning

The starting point of the project was a call in the Savigny-Journal of 1893,
launched by the renowned legal historian Heinrich Brunner. In a review on a
“dictionary of the English legal expressions“, including a “glossary about the
Anglo-French linguistic treasure“, projected by the London Selden-Society, he
emphasised:

“If you compare the fragmentation of the German legal development with the
relative closeness of the English one, when we consider the manifoldness of the German dialects and the necessity, when explaining German legal terms,
to show consideration for other Germanic rights, one will have to admit that for
us a terminological legal dictionary would truly be more urgently necessary
than for our English cousins“.

Heinrich Brunner was referring to “a dictionary of Law French, the language that was used for legal discourse into the seventeenth century and which is derived from the Anglo-Norman dialect of French” , by courtesy of Charles Donahue, Jr., treasurer of the Selden Society for the USA, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA, and Victor Tunkel, General secretary of the Selden
Society, c/o School of Law, Queen Mary University of London. “The Society did produce a
Law-French dictionary compiled by the late Elsie Shanks. The manuscript was shown to
Professor Collas, an expert in old French who had co-edited some of our volumes. He was
then producing his own dictionary. He thought that the Shanks was not sufficiently
scholarly. We therefore did not proceed and the project was dropped.” by courtesy of Victor
Tunkel, London.

Finally founded in 1897, the dictionary was designed as a European project
from the outset. When the foundation commission around Karl von Amira and
Otto von Gierke had published the project plan, there were soon about 250
people willing to make excerpts from historical texts for the dictionary, or to
support the project otherwise. Among them were numerous important
personalities from all over Europe.

Seat of the Foundation commission was the Prussian Academy of the
Sciences in Berlin. But the research centre and the Archives of the project
have always been in Heidelberg. In May 1900, a “Swiss Commission for the
Promotion of the German legal dictionary” was constituted, led by Eugen
Huber, the creator of the famous Swiss Civil Code. Among the founding
members were the eminent collector of medieval proverbs, Samuel Singer,
and the founding chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland,
Alexander Reichel.

A little later, in 1903, an Austrian “Committee for the
support of the German Legal Dictionary” was formed, to which Ernst von
Schwind (as chairman), Karl Kraus and Alfons Dopsch belonged among
others. The processing of the Flemish legal sources was organised by
Wilhelm de Marez in Brussels. Furthermore the lawyer Sybrandus J. Fockema
Andreae and Jakob Verdam, the famous editor of the Middle Dutch dictionary
“Verwijs-Verdam” ,13 were entrusted with the excerpts in the Netherlands. In
Prague, Franz Kafka’s academic teacher, the Privy Councillor Horace
Krasnopolski, the lawyer and philologist Hans Schreuer, as well as later on the
legal historian Max Rintelen were involved in contributing to the DRW. In his
preface to the first volume Ernst Heymann also thanked the lawyer and
historian Karol Koranyi from today’s Ukrainian Lviv (Lemberg) for his “most
valuable support” .

The centre of all these activities has always been Heidelberg. Here all the
threads have been gathered up from the beginning. The excerpts compiled on
standardised index cards were sent here and sorted by staff in alphabetical
card file boxes.

An example of such an index card is shown here: This is a reference to the
word “Morgengabe” (dowry, morning gift) from an Old English source, namely
a law of King Aethelberht from the year 604. Unfortunately, the hardly legible
handwriting is typical of our excerpts. In this case it was written by Felix Liebermann, the brother of the painter Max Liebermann. Deceased in 1925,
he is still considered the most outstanding German expert on Old English
laws.

Today the Dictionary of Historical German Legal Terms is edited by an interdisciplinary
team of academics (lawyers, philologists, historians and a philosopher) at the
“Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities” . The printed edition
comprises 11 volumes with about 90,000 articles from A to S so far.

The Dictionary of Historical German Legal Terms is based on about 2.5 million index cards – for a large part collected in the initial phase of the project – and electronic text archives with
currently about 15 million words, which are being expanded continuously.
Overall a text corpus with a total of 8400 sigla is accessed via the index cards
and the electronic text archives. While a number of sigla only stand for a
single source text (example: “Ssp.” means the Mirror of Saxony), very many
other sigla refer to complete collections or to whole magazine series.


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