RELATIONS OF GERMAN LINGUISTICS 283 



pretation, thereby received its deathblow, and it could be saved only 

 in somewhat modified form for a portion of Middle High German 

 literature, to be sure, however, the most valuable part. But here 

 again contradiction soon set in, plainly influenced by the higher 

 value that linguistics ascribed to the dialects as such, since these 

 very dialects furnished more suitable and accordingly more valuable 

 material for their special purposes of investigation. Thus Hermann 

 Paul taught that in the middle period of German there was no artistic 

 language of poetry differing in principle from the dialects. He stated 

 that no poet hesitated to make use of his own dialect, and claimed 

 that the small number of differentiated dialectical forms to be found 

 in the classical poetry of Upper Germany, or more especially in the 

 rimes of the poets, was due to the fact that the separation into dia- 

 lects in Upper Germany had not at that time advanced far enough 

 to leave plain traces behind in the technique of rime. ; . 



Thus another extreme view was established and occasion furnished 

 for a lively and protracted controversy between the two camps, of 

 which one exaggerated the philological and the other the linguistic 

 elements. 



In the end neither of the extreme views was accepted in its en- 

 tirety, but, as in so many other cases, the truth was found on middle 

 ground. The partial agreement that has been secured in this import- 

 ant question is the happy consummation of the satisfactory settle- 

 ment reached between philology and linguistics, especially through 

 the model labors of Carl Kraus and Konrad Zwierzina. Both of these 

 investigators proceeded, to be sure, from the strictly philological 

 side, but, on the other hand, in explaining complicated conditions, 

 they have not disdained the aid given by modern dialectology. We 

 may, therefore, now regard it as certain, that the Middle High 

 German poets of the classical period were really no mere naturalists 

 so far as their language was concerned. Their idioms were real artistic 

 dialects, only in a different sense from that of Lachmann. Nor can 

 we any longer speak of a ruling unity, but only of more or less strik- 

 ing resemblances; and the degree of these resemblances depends 

 primarily upon the relationship of those dialects to which the various 

 poets belong. The languages employed by the poets, accordingly, 

 also rest upon the dialects, but the poets do not present these dialects 

 in their entire purity, inasmuch as they are prone to omit all forms 

 that would appear too strange to the auditor speaking another 

 dialect. The artistic character of the languages employed by the 

 various Middle High German poets is therefore mainly negative, 

 consisting rather in the avoidance of what is not regarded as gen- 

 erally accepted than in the inclusion of linguistic forms from an- 

 other dialect for the sake of unity. It cannot, of course, be denied that 

 there is a certain tendency toward generalization even under these 



