824 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
founded by Leibniz in 1700, has taken hold of this problem in 
a way that guarantees its final solution. 
It succeeded in getting the German emperor interested in 
this work, and when in 1900 the Royal Academy celebrated its 
bicentennial, his Majesty augmented this illustrious body of 
scholars by providing for three new members for the especial 
study of the German language and literature from an his¬ 
torical point of view. In order to create a broad and safe 
foundation for this work, a special German Commission was 
founded in the summer of 1903, to which belong, besides the 
three Germmists of the Academy, Professors Schmidt, Bur- 
dach and Roethe, also Professors Diels, Koser and Dilthey. 1 
This commission has mapped out for its work the following 
program: 
Pirst: To publish and edit, mostly for the first time, im¬ 
portant German texts of the Middle Ages. So far, five volumes 
have been published: a Friedrich von Sehwaben,” edited by 
Jellinek; “Rudolfs von Ems Willehalm von Orlens,” edited 
by V. Junk; “Die Lehrgedichte der Melker Handschrift,” 
edited by A. Leitzmann; and “Volks- und Gesellschaftslieder 
des XVten and XVIten Jahrhunderts,” edited by Arthur 
Kopp. 
Second: To catalog all literary monuments written or 
printed in German up to the sixteenth century, wherever found. 
Third: To investigate the history of the Modern High Ger¬ 
man literary language from 1300 up to Goethe’s death. For 
the present, four volumes are in preparation, relating to the 
origin and development of the written language of the four¬ 
teenth and fifteenth centuries. 
In addition to this, the Commission is also in charge of an 
exhaustive study of all German dialects. The compilation of 
a Rheno-Franconian dialect dictionary is already under way. 2 
It is also the aim of this Commission to furnish us with critical 
1 To this commission have been added as non-academic members 
Professors Franck in Bonn and Seuffert in Graz. 
2 This work has been entrusted to Professor Franck of Bonn. 
