324 



GOTHS 



GOTTINGEN 



down to the 18th century. In 1562 the famous 

 traveller Busbecq met at Constantinople with two 

 Crimean envoys, and wrote down a long list of 

 words of their language, which he recognised as 

 having an affinity with his native Flemish. The 

 words are for the most part unquestionably Gothic. 

 It is possible that in the Crimea the Gothic speech 

 may liave survived to a much later time; in 1750 

 the Jesuit Mondorf learned from a native of that 

 region, whom he had ransomed from the Turkish 

 galleys, that his countrymen spoke a language 

 having some resemblance to German. 



The Gothic language is now classed by phil- 

 ologists as belonging, together with the Scandi- 

 navian dialect, to the ' East Germanic ' group, so 

 called in contradistinction to the ' West Germanic,' 

 which includes Old English and Low and High 

 German. In some of its features the East Ger- 

 manic form of Teutonic speech is more primitive 

 than the other branch e.g. in the preservation of 

 the inflexional final -z (becoming in Gothic * and in 

 Old Norse r), which in West Germanic is lost. On 

 the other hand, there are certain features ( such as 

 the substitution of -aggiv-, -iggw-, for the original 

 -auw-, -euw- ) in which the eastern branch shows a 

 later stage of development. As the Bible trans- 

 lated by Wulfila is several centuries older than 

 the earliest written remains of any other Teutonic 

 language, the value of Gothic in the study of 

 Teutonic philology is very great, although the 

 mistaken notion that it represents substantially 

 the ancestral form of the Teutonic languages as a 

 whole led the scholars of an earlier generation into 

 many errors which are still often repeated in 

 popular handbooks. The Gothic written character, 

 believed to be the invention of Wulfila, is substan- 

 tially an adoption of the ordinary Greek alphabet 

 of the 4th century, some letters, however, being 

 taken from the Latin, and others from the Runic 

 alphabet used by the Goths before their conversion. 

 The most scientific grammar of the language is 

 that of W. Braune ( Eng. trans. 1883); Douse's 

 Introduction to the Gothic of Ulphilas (1886) is 

 also valuable. The most complete dictionary is 

 still that of Schulze (Magdeburg, 1848), which 

 gives full references to the passages in which the 

 words occur, and also the Greek words which 

 they render in Wulfila's translation. It should, 

 however, be checked by comparison with later 

 works e.g. with Schulze's abridgment of 1867, 

 or the concise dictionaries of Heyne and Bern- 

 hardt. A useful vocabulary, with an outline of 

 the grammar, has been published by Professor 

 Skeat (1868). 



The scanty -written remains of the Gothic lan- 

 guage are scarcely entitled to the name of litera- 

 ture. Wulfila's translation of the Bible, however, 

 is a work of extraordinary ability, and from its 

 early date and its extreme faithfulness is of some 

 value for the textual criticism of the New Testa- 

 ment. The extant portions comprise the greater 

 part of the four gospels, parts of St Paul's epistles, 

 and some verses of Ezra and Nehemiah. The 

 remaining Gothic writings are a portion of a com- 

 mentary on the gospel of St John, two title-deeds 

 referring to property at Ravenna and at Arezzo, 

 and a fragment of a Gothic calendar. All the 

 existing Gothic MSS. seem to have been written in 

 Italy in the first half of the 6th century. The 

 most important of these, the beautiful Codex 

 Argenteus of the gospels, was discovered in the 

 16th century in the monastery of Werden in 

 Westphalia, and is now at Upsala. Of Gothic 

 inscriptions in the Runic character only three are 

 known, all probably belonging to the 4th century ; 

 two of them are merely men's names (Tilarids, 

 Ranya) scratched on spear-heads, and the third 

 consists of the words Gutani owi ( or okwi ) hailag, 



'the holy ... of the Goths,' on a gold necklet 

 found in 1838 at Petrossa in Wallachia. See Henry 

 Bradley, The Goths, to the end of the Dominion in 

 Spain (' Story of the Nations ' series, 1888). 



Gotterdftnimerimg. See RAGNAROK. 



Gottfried von Strasblirg, a famous medi- 

 eval German poet, who Flourished about the close 

 of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century, 

 contemporary with Hartmann von Aue, whom 

 he celebrates as the first of German narrators, 

 Wolfram von Eschenhach, to the prologue of whose 

 Parzival he alludes, and Walter von der Vogel- 

 weide. Gottfried's poem, Tristan und Isolde, 

 extends to 19,552 short rhymed lines, but was left 

 unfinished, and ends abruptly. It was completed 

 about 1210, and he himself died between that year 

 and 1220. The story itself is of course of- Celtic 

 origin ; and there is hardly another theme that has 

 laid such a potent spell upon the imagination of 

 poets in every age. Gottfried's immediate source 

 was a poem of the French trouvere Thomas, of 

 which only fragments now exist ; but in his hands 

 the theme has been treated with a new poetic 

 vigour and mastery at once of pathos and of 

 passion. Gottfried's works, with later continua- 

 tions of Tristan by Ulrich von Tiirheim and Hein- 

 rich von Freiberg, were published by Fr. Heinrich 

 von der Hagen ( 1823). The best edition is that of 

 Bechstein (2d ed. 1873). Modern German trans- 

 lations have been given by Kurtz (1844), Simrock 

 (1855), and Wilh. Hertz (1877). Wagner has made 

 use of Tristan for his opera Tristan und Isolde. 

 See works by Franck (1865) and Golther (1887). 



Gotthelf. See BITZIUS. 



Gottingen ( 10th century Gutingi), a town in 

 the former kingdom of Hanover, lies 538 feet above 

 sea-level in the Leine's wide valley, encircled by 

 gentle hills the highest, the Hainberg (1246 feet). 

 By rail it is 67 miles S. of Hanover, and 36 NE. 

 of Cassel. The ramparts, long since outgrown, and 

 now planted with lindens, form a charming pro- 

 menade ; but architecturally Gottingen has noth- 

 ing much to boast of a quaint rathhaits, a statue 

 of William IV., and a few antique buildings, one of 

 which, the Jacobikirche, has a steeple 320 feet high. 

 The celebrated university ( Georgia Augusta) was 

 founded 1734-37 by Baron Miinchhausen, under 

 the auspices of George II., Elector of Hanover 

 and king of England, and now has 120 professors 

 of various grades, and more than 1000 students of 

 philosophy, theology, medicine, and jurisprudence. 

 Connected with it are the library of 500,000 volumes 

 and 5000 MSS., the art museum, the splendid 

 botanic garden ( laid out by Haller), the observa- 

 tory, the laboratory, the lying-in hospital, &c., 

 as also the Royal Society (1750) which publishes 

 the well-known Transactions and the Gottinger 

 Gelehrte Anzeigen. Longfellow, Motley, Ticknor, 

 Bancroft, and several other illustrious Americans 

 studied at Gottingen, whose native alumni in- 

 clude many of Germany's most famous sons. The 

 ' Gottinger Dichterbund ' was a small poet band 

 (Voss, the two Stolbergs, Klopstock, Burger, &c. ) 

 who, in the ' Storm and Stress days of 1770-78 did 

 much for the revival of national feeling ; by the 

 ' Gottinger Sieben ' are meant the seven professors 

 (Albrecht, Dahlmann, Ewald, Gervinus, the two 

 Grimms, and Weber) who for their liberal tend- 

 encies were in 1837 expelled by King Ernest 

 Augustus. The book-trade is of more importance 

 than the manufactures woollens, sugar, chemicals, 

 &c. Pop. (1875) 17,057; (1890) 23,689, of whom 

 1714 were Catholics, and 536 Jews. Raised to a 

 town in 1210, and a considerable member of the 

 Hanse in the 14th century, Gottingen suffered 

 much during the Thirty Years' War, when it was 

 taken by Tilly in 1626, and recaptured by the 



