Goethe-Wörterbuch

Das Goethe-Wörterbuch ist ein individualsprachliches Bedeutungswörterbuch, das den gesamten Wortschatz Goethes, circa 90.000 Stichwörter, in alphabetischer Anordnung und systematisch nach Gebrauchsweisen gegliederten Wortartikeln wiedergibt. Dabei werden Gemeinsprachlichkeit, vielfältige Fachsprachlichkeit und das Besondere der Goetheschen Dichtersprache gleichermaßen berücksichtigt. Das nicht nur für die Erschließung der Goetheschen Dichtung, sondern als Verständnishilfe für alle Texte von Klassik bis Romantik unentbehrlich gewordene Nachschlagewerk befindet sich bereits im letzten Drittel des Alphabets.

Wer wissen will, wie man zwischen Rokoko und Biedermeier über den „Menschen” und die „Nation” sprach, über die „Öffentlichkeit” und das „Private”, über „Politik” und „Polizei”, nicht zuletzt auch über die „Pöbelmajestät” und die „Poltertheorie”, der wird hier fündig. Übersichtlich gegliederte Wortartikel informieren umfassend über die z.T. recht überraschenden Bedeutungsaspekte in der Kinderstube des heutigen Deutsch; belegt werden die Befunde ebenso anschaulich wie unterhaltsam mit Originalzitaten auch aus den Randgebieten von Goethes Schaffen.

Das Goethe-Wörterbuch ist ein interakademisches Projekt. Arbeitsstellen sind neben Tübingen auch in Berlin/Leipzig, betreut durch die Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, und in Hamburg, betreut durch die Niedersächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, von Projektbeginn an etabliert.

For english readers:

The Goethe Dictionary is an individual language dictionary which registers Goethe's entire vocabulary in alphabetical order. With a “Wortschatz” of around 93,000 words, Goethe is considered the most eloquent German author. Fortunately, Goethe’s written and (part of) oral legacy has been almost completely published. This corpus is the point of reference for the comprehensive analysis of his vocabulary and word usage.

The dictionary is based on an archive of around 3.5 million citations for all the headwords (from “A” to “zypresseragend”), not only deriving from his literary works, but also from countless letters, diaries, scientific writings and official documents. They demonstrate Goethe's multifaceted every day as well as poetic language and his extensive scientific and technical vocabulary (from anatomy, botany and chemistry to geology, mineralogy and optics, administrative science, civil law and zoology). However, Goethe's language is not only the idiolect of a unique, linguistically powerful and lexically abundant author, but also presents the general contemporary language of the late 18th and early 19th centuries to a large extent - a period which, not least because of Goethe, is considered the formative epoch of the modern German language.

The formally structured articles show the range of meanings in Goethe’s usage of each headword. They provide comprehensive information about the sometimes quite surprising aspects of meaning in the infancy of today’s German. The findings are documented in a way that is both vivid and entertaining with original quotations, often from the lesser-known fringes of Goethe’s work. Therefore, the Goethe Dictionary has become indispensable not only for the understanding of Goethe's literary work but also as an aid to understanding all texts from the Classical to the Romantic period.

History

In the beginning was the word – or, in the case of the Goethe Dictionary: a written word, namely a "memorandum" by the Berlin classical philologist and Goethe researcher Wolfgang Schadewaldt. At the end of 1946, he succeeded in convincing the German Academy of Sciences with his programmatic pro memoria to dedicate an author's dictionary to Germany's most famous poet. Schadewaldt had specifically turned to one of the academies of science, as he saw them as the "cathedral masons guilds huts" of research and the only institutions who could be trusted to have the standing for such an ambitious project.

After the Berlin and Hamburg offices were founded (1947), the Tübingen office was established in 1951 at Schadewaldt's new chair. About three decades later, the Goethe dictionary was included into the academy program for long-term projects. Since then, it has been an inter-academy project, supervised by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Tübingen), the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Berlin/Leipzig), and the Lower Saxony Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Göttingen (Hamburg).

In 2004, the digitization of the first volumes and their publication on the Internet began in a DFG-funded project at the Competence Centre for Electronic Indexing and Publication Methods in the Humanities at the University of Trier. The first six volumes and the first instalments of the seventh volume are now available online.

Completion of the Goethe dictionary was originally planned for 2036. Since then the deadline has been brought forward and the completion set has been set for 2025. There are currently six completed volumes and the bigger part of the seventh volume available in print.

Structure of the Articles

A (large) article in the Goethe Dictionary is usually made up of up the following parts: keyword, preliminary remark, description of meanings (semantic part), selected quotations, further references, semantic areas of use, word formation, synonyms. The most important parts are:

Preliminary remark. It may contain:

an overview of the article,
information on spelling, phonetic, word form,
information on the frequency and distribution over the text groups or the meanings,
information about the semantic field and its environment,
information on the history of the word or term,
information on special features or conspicuous use by Goethe.

Semantic part: It is structured hierarchically with alphanumeric structure marks (I, A, 1, a, α) and can contain, among other things:

information about the lexical meanings, usually in the form of definitions, synonyms or paraphrases;
information on word usage, that is typical for Goethe:
modifications of meanings according to each word’s specific contexts; connotations, evaluations, perspectives, references;
information on peculiarities of poetic language, e.g. metaphor, symbolism, ambiguity, associativity;
information on conceptual and terminological usage;
information on areas of use (e.g. anatomical, architectural, mining), stylistic patterns (e.g. epistolary style, official style) and stylistic values (e.g. facetious, coarse).

Quotations: They have the function of substantiating the respective meaning and concurrently conveying an idea of the variety of possible usages in different contexts. Generally, only a strict selection of quotations and references is given.

Digital resources:

Goethe-Wörterbuch online

Volumes I to VI were brought into an online version at the Trier Competence Center for Electronic Publishing with the support of the DFG. https://woerterbuchnetz.de/?sigle=GWB&lemid=A00001

You can also find the Goethe Dictionary on Twitter/X!

Recommendation for further information for English readers:

Georg Objartel, Goethe’s Vocabulary and Semantics in nuce (goethes_vocabulary_objartel.pdf)

Goethe zu Wörterbüchern

"Die Reitpferde waren nicht zu erblicken; der große Küchenwagen mit sechs tüchtigen bespannt kam an mir vorbei. Ich bestieg ihn; von Viktualien war er nicht ganz leer, die Küchenmagd aber stak sehr verdrießlich in der Ecke. Ich überließ mich meinen Studien. Den dritten Band von Fischers physikalischem Lexikon hatte ich aus dem Koffer genommen; in solchen Fällen ist ein Wörterbuch die willkommenste Begleitung, wo jeden Augenblick eine Unterbrechung vorfällt, und dann gewährt es wieder die beste Zerstreuung, indem es uns von einem zum andern führt".

(Campagne in Frankreich. 1792)