﻿OERMAKT. 



OERMANT. 



kimnlf M tlwt guide, umI " fuMd ux) diaiolrad " the name of Prunia 

 iato that of Oernunj. 'A ooogrmi of deputiea wu nooa after con- 

 ■Ulutad at Frankfurt to make arrangemeoU for eonvoking a National 

 OoMtHotional AiMmbljr. Tluiaaeembl7metatFrankfart(June28tli), 

 and appointed a prorinonal central power, to be preaided orer by an 

 impenal regent, or adminiitrator (Reichirerweeer), elected by the 

 iMembly. They then proceeded to elect the Archduke Johann of 

 Aoatiia nigent of the Oennan empire, and ho at once accepted the 

 offioet The aaaembly next proceeded to diwrnas various measures for 

 the ■oremwant of the empire, bat little real progress was made. The 

 partuaas of Austria and Prussia were neariy balanced, and the main 

 Irasinass soon resolved itself into a struggle for the ascendancy of one 

 or other of t h ese powers. At length by one vote Austria was excluded 

 ttota the Qerman empire, and by another (passed March 28, 1849) the 

 King of Prussia was elected hereditary Emperor of the Oermans, but 

 nearly half of the members refrained from taking part in this election ; 

 while Austria, by a droular note (dated 3rd of April) protested af;ainst 

 this as well as all future proceedings of the Frankfurt National Assem- 

 bly, and rafased any longer to recognise its existence ; and eventually 

 the King of Prussia dedined the Imperial crown and rejected the 

 (Vankfiirt constitution. Other protests and withdrawals quickly 

 followed, and the aaaembly, its members much diminished, and its 

 resolutions utteriy disregarded, fell into anarchy, impotence, and dis- 

 solution. Austria and Prussia entered (Sept. 30, 1849) into a separate 

 treaty for the formation of a new, ad interim, central power, and the 

 Archduke Johaon, in consequence, resigned into the hands of the 

 ^enipotentiaries his oSBoe as regent of the empire. Meetings of the 

 German princea, Ac., were subsequently called, and various prooeedinga 

 taken, but matters have eventually fallen back pretty much into the 

 condition in which they were at the beginning of 1848. The diet of 

 the Qerman Confederation meets ss of old, and discusses the state of 

 Oermany, but its resolutions do not at the present time appear to 

 carry much weight. 



Oermau Ltmgiiagt and Littralytrt. — The German or Teutonic lan- 

 guage may be divided into two great branches, which are subdivided 

 mto several dialects : the High German, or the language of Southern 

 Oermany; and the Low German, or Saxon, which is tued in the 

 northern part of that country. 



The High German was formerly divided into two dialects, the Francic 

 and the iQlemannie. The Francic was the idiom of the Franks and 

 that of the Fkvnch court till the reign of Charles the Bald, when it 

 was replaced by the French. The principal monuments of this dialect 

 ■re, the fmgmenta of a treatise of Isidore, ' De Nativitate Christi,' 

 which date from the beginning of the 8th century, and some fragments 

 of the poem of Hildebrand and Hadubrand, which belong to the end 

 of the same century, as well as the oath of Charles the Bald. It was 

 nasd at the court of the German emperors till the accession of the 

 Hohsostauffen. The Allemannic dialect prevailed in the soutb-weatem 

 part of Germany, including a great part of Switzerland. Its most 

 ancient monuments are — a translation of the ' Rules of St. Benedict,' 

 made about the beginning of the 8th centurr ; the poetical ' Para- 

 phrase of the Gospels,' by Ottfried, and a translation of Psalms, by a 

 nook called Noker, made about the beginning of the 10th century. 

 Both the above-mentioned dialects seem to have disappeared in the 

 middle ages, and to have been replaced by the Suabian dialect, which 

 became the language of the court under the Hohenstauffen dynasty, 

 and in which tM lunneaingers composed their poems. 



The modem Oerman, also called High German (Hnch Deutsch) 

 nay be coosUared as chiefly derived from the old High Oermao, or 

 ■ottllMni dialsct> Its universal usage as the literary language of 

 ■U Oarmaay date* from Luther's translstion of the Bible, by which 

 eireomatanos it acquired a decided superiority over all the dialects of 

 Oermany. 



The written language of modem Germany must however be dis- 

 tinguished from that which is only spoken. The spoken langusge 

 rb« divided into the following dialects: — 1 , the Swiss, which is 



■pokso 



Muo in Oenaan Switserland, and which itself may be subdivided into 

 'acal diaUcts, aa for instance that of Berae and Aigau, that of the 

 mIUj of Baali, of Krsiburg, of the Orisons, and of Appenzel ; 2, the 

 Rheni s h dialect, which is likewise subdivided into many dialects, as 

 that of Alsatia, of Suabia, Ac ; 3, the Oanubian, subdivided into the 

 Bavarian, Austrian, and Tyrolcee dialecta. 



The Saxon, that is, the language of Northern or Lower Oermany, 

 may be divided into tlia following dialect* : — I, the old Low Oerman 

 (AH Niader Dontaoh), esUed also the old Saxon, from the nation thct 

 ■poke il> TUa laogoaga^ whioh is now entirely extinct, was spoken 

 •t an sariv period, and during a part of the middle agss in ail the 

 north of Oennaoy aa well as in the Low Countries, except the parts 

 tekaUtad by tha rrisiaDS and the Angles. The works written in this 

 laagMg* wars oompoead from the 8th to the 11th century; tha nriu- 

 oifM or tham is the ' Evaagelira Harmony,' which aeema to date m>m 

 tha bagiaaing of tho Mh oaatarr. 3, tha Low Oerman of the middle 

 •gat, wUdi was in tu* from the 11th to the 10th oentury, contains 

 many works ; but its Uteiatare is very inferior to that of the Suabian, 

 or the High Oerman of the middle agea. The chief i>roductions in 

 that dialect are— a ' Voeabalary,' ooBpcasd in the 12th century; a 

 tfaoalatioD of the Bibla, mad* at the hsglniitng of the 13th century ; 

 and th* wcll-kaowa oomk p(odaolioa% ' BsjimIm dsr Fucha ' and * Til 



EulenspiegeL' 3, the modem Low Oerman, which is spoken over 

 almoat all Northern Germany, but has ceased to be a written language. 

 Its literature is vei7 poor, and contains, besides popular songs, only 

 some grammars, vocabularies, and a few ohronidea, of which the 

 principal is that of Livonia by Russow. This language, which is 

 subdivided into many dialects, is distinguished by the softness of its 

 sounds, and has fewer gutturals and accumulated hissing oonsonanta 

 than the High Oerman dialects. The Low German is divided into 

 three principal dialects: 1, the Saxon proper, or the idiom of Lower 

 Saxony, which is subdivided into the dialects of Hamburg, Holstein, 

 Schleswig, Hanover, Ac. ; 2, the Oriental Saxon, which is also sub- 

 divided into the idioms of Higher Saxony, Brandenburg, Pomeranta ; 

 8, the Occidental Saxon, or Westphalian, which is also subdivided into 

 several dialecta. 



The Frisian language is a branch of the Oerman tongue. It may 

 be divided into three dialects : 1, the Batavo-Frisian, which very much 

 resembles the Anglo-Saxon, and which was formerly spoken iu many 

 parts of the north of Holland, but is now preserved only in a few 

 places about the towns of Moleweren and Hmdelopen in West Friea- 

 land ; 2, the Westphalian Friaiau, which was spoken in many parte of 

 Westphalia, but is now entirely extinct and replaced by the Saxon : 

 3, the Northern Frisian, which still exists on the island of Heligoland 

 as well as in some parts of Schleswig, where Frisian settlers established 

 themselves in the middle ages. The Frisian literature is very poor. 



The Anglo-Saxon ; the Dutch and Flemish ; and the Scandinavian 

 languages are also branches of the German tongue. 



'Those who wish to study the history of the Teutonic languages 

 will find ample information in the learned works of the two brothers 

 Qrimm, which hare been republished several times in Germany. 



The most ancient monument of Oerman literature extant is the 

 translation of the Bible into the Gothic language by Bishop Ulfilaa. 

 It was made in the second part of the 4th oentury, for the use of the 

 Gothic tribe of the Thervingians, who, having settled on the banks of 

 the Danube in the ancient Roman province of Hccsia, were generally 

 called MoBso-Ooths. Ulfilaa on that occnaion introduced a new 

 alphabet by modifying the old Uunic characters, which were in general 

 use amongst the Teutonic nations. The library of Upsal in Sweden 

 possesses a remarkable fragment of this translation, well known under 

 the name of the ' Codex Argenteus,' being written in silver lettera 

 on a purple-coloured parchment. It contains the four gospels, and is 

 supposed to have been written in the 6th or at least in the beginning 

 of the 6th century, among the Goths of Italy. Some fragments of 

 St Paul's Epistles to the Romans were discovered on a palimpsest in 

 the library of Wolfenbiittel ; and several parts of the Imoka of Esdras 

 and Nebemiah, oa well oa several epistles of St. Paul, preserved in 

 the same manner, were discovered in the library of Milan by 

 Angelo Mai. 



The reign of Charlemagne may be considered as the commence- 

 ment of the Oerman literature, although there ore some frag- 

 ments of translations from eccleaiasticU books which were probably 

 made prior to that epoch. Charlemagne, who waa very anxious to 

 promote the cultivation of hia native language, iutroduced Uerman 

 names of months. Ue ordered the scattered monuments of the Teu- 

 tonic language, particularly laws or customs, and songs to be collected. 

 He also ordered the ministers of religion to preach in Uurman, and 

 directed the translation of several thiugs from the Latin for the infor- 

 mation of the common {leople. The two most ancient German poems 

 are, the ' Lay of Hildebrand and Hadubrand,' and the ' Prayer of 

 Weiszenbnm, which have been published by Grimm, and which 

 belong to the 8th century. 



After the reign of Charlemagne, the ChrisUan religion beiug 

 established throughout all Germany, many fragments of the Bible 

 and some ecclesiastical writings were paraphrased from the Latin iuto 

 the vulgar tongue. The separation of the Germanic empire from the 

 French, which took place in the middle of the 9th century, acted 

 beneficially on the national language and literature. The earliest 

 known Oerman poem of that time is a song written iu commemora- 

 tion of the victory which Louis III. of France gained over the 

 Normans in 881. Another curious monument of the literature of 

 that time is the laudatory poem on Saint Anno, archbishop of Cologne 

 and tutor of the emperor llanry IV. But the most remarkable pro- 

 duction is the metrical paraphrase of the Gospels by Ottfried, a Bene- 

 dictine monk, made about 870, which shows au uucummon poetical 

 genius in the author, who had to contend with all the tlillicultiea 

 presented by a rude and uncultivated language. To this |>eriod belon'^ 

 also the chroniclers Wittikiud, Dithuior, Lambert, and Bruno, who all 

 wrote in Latin. 



The reign of the emperors of the Suabian family of Huhenstauffeu 

 is the golden age of the romantic or chivalrous poetry of Ger- 

 many. This poetry being written in the Suabian dialect, which 

 came into fashion through the influence of the reiguing family, 

 la gnaarally called the Suabian. The poets of that perio<l ara 

 known under the name of Minnexingen, from the old German 

 word ' minne,' which signifies ' love.' They may be compared 

 in many respects with the Troubadours of Provence, and were 

 generally knights and nobles, whoso life was divided between the 

 occupations of love, war, and devotion, which inspired their poetical 

 einisious with tender, noble, and pious feelings. They lived chiefly 



