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Viktor Žirmunskij and German Mundartforschung

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Abstract

German dialect geography developed, inter alia, as a means to compensate the shortcomings of the Young Grammarians’ approach to language. In contrast to the latter, it was conceived of to be a sociolinguistic project, constituting thereby one link between the development of Soviet and German linguistics. The article tries to answer such questions as who initially participated in transferring ideas of German dialectology to the Soviet Union and what kind of motivations underlay those transfers. Combining biographical facts with systematic aspects, the article surveys the filiations of some productive ideas with the help of archival sources, i.e. letters of the Soviet scholars Dinges (1891–1932) and Viktor Žirmunskij (1891–1971). Finally, I try to single out the elements in Žirmunskij dialect geography, which are specifically sociolinguistic.

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Notes

  1. Cf. Žirmunskij (1913, 1914).

  2. Cf. Belobratov (2004) for an introduction in Žirmunskij’s life and work with rich bibliographical information.

  3. For example, Hass-Zumkehr (1999) does not pay attention to it at all.

  4. Cf. Berend/Jedig (1991, pp. 28–71).

  5. Čukovskij (1989, p. 61).

  6. Cf. Berkov (1965, p. 10).

  7. Mironov (1971, p. 298) acknowledges Dinges as a precursor. However, he is eager to reduce his role. According to Mironov he “made only a first attempt” to study German dialects in the Volga region, and Žirmunskij was the actual founder of German dialectology in Russia. In contrast to that, Berend and Jedig (1991, 113 f., 124 f.) emphasize Dinges’s leading role and cite Žirmunskij’s own comments on this question as evidence for their hypothesis. Cf. Žirmunskij (1930, p. 113).

  8. Berend (1989). The study has not been published. Excerpts are discussed in Berend and Jedig (1991). Dinges (1924/25b, p. 300) himself renders the title as follows: “Influence of Russian in Volga German dialects” (“Einfluß des Russischen in den wolgadeutschen Mdaa. [=Mundarten]”).

  9. In cooperation with N. N. Durnovo und N. N. Sokolov, Ušakov edited Opyt dialektologičeskoj karty russkogo jazyka v Evropě (Moscow 1915). Its relationship to the German language atlas has not been studied yet.

  10. In 1876, Georg Wenker began to distribute around 40 phrases in German dialect areas to test the distribution of the second German sound shift, for example, water to wasser, or hus to haus. The test persons had to translate the phrases into their dialects, thus proving or disproving the sound shift in one case or another.

  11. Dinges’s materials are edited by Nina Berend and published as Wolgadeutscher Sprachatlas (Berend 1997).

  12. For more on Dinges’ trial and death cf. Krieger/Spack (2006).

  13. Cf. Jakobson (1976/96, p. 366) .

  14. Cf. Toman (1995).

  15. Cf. M. Šapir’s commentary on Jakobson (1976/96, p. 362).

  16. Cf. Fn. 11.

  17. Dinges (1924/25b). Except for another contribution (1924/25a), Dinges published in Russian and Volga German periodicals. A German written monograph was published in Russia in 1923. Žirmunskij’s first article was written in cooperation with his student Ströhm (1926/27). For a complete survey of Žirmunskij’s work on dialectology, cf. Mironov (1971).

  18. Berend and Jedig (1991, p. 22) credit only Wrede to have initiated dialectological research in the Volga region because Kromm did not aim at dialectology in the strict sense.

  19. Alfred Ströhm later became professor of German at Odessa university. He was the brother-in-law of Vladimir Propp and disappeared in 1936. Cf. Smirnickaja (2003).

  20. Žirmunskij to Professor [Wrede], June 20, 1924 (DSA).

  21. Berend and Jedig (1991, p. 114) mention the year 1921. However, this does not fit in with the information Žirmunskij provides.

  22. These plans were realized, indeed, as is documented in his publications since then.

  23. “Before the war, our university regularly exchanged dissertations with most of the German universities—we lack, however, the dissertations from Marburg and Giessen, the most important ones for German dialectology, and since 1914, the exchange has completely stopped.” [“Unsere Universität stand vor dem Kriege in beständigem Austausch von Dissertationen mit den meisten deutschen Universitäten —aber es fehlen gerade die Dissertationen aus Marburg und Giessen, die wichtigsten für die deutsche Mundartenforschung, und seit 1914 ist auch sonst der Austausch ausgeblieben“] (Zhirmunskii, cf. Fn. 21, italics by Žirmunskij).

  24. Thus, Žirmunskij (1928) is more concerned with folk songs than with dialects.

  25. Žirmunskij [to Wrede], April 14, 1925 from Bonn (DSA).

  26. Žirmunskij’s wife Tat’jana mentions on a postcard to Oskar Walzel on December 15, 1925, 22 h. Žirmunskij adds one day later that he is currently concerned with dialectology: “It so happens that I can bring together people from all over Russia here at the German pedagogical–technical school—people from Hesse, the Palatinate, Swabia, Thuringia and even emigrants from Northern Germany (Mennonites).” [“Zufälliger Weise habe ich hier die Möglichkeit in einem Deutschen Paedagogischen Technikum Kolonisten aus ganz Russland beisammen zu haben—Hessen, Pfälzer, Schwaben, Thüringer, und selbst Auswanderer aus Norddeutschland (Mennoniten)”(DLA).].

  27. That is why it sounds somewhat prophetic what Žirmunskij wrote to Walzel on March 14, 1928, referring to his book (1928): “[…] I find it rather curious that [in Germany] one becomes acquainted with me not by my work on literary history but by a minor subject.” [“(…) und es kommt mir etwas merkwürdig vor, dass man mich auf diese Weise nicht durch meine literarhistorischen Arbeiten, sondern in einem Nebenfach, kennen lernen soll” (DLA).].

  28. This explains the didactic style of Žirmunskij (1928, 1928/29) with regard to the teacher training in the German settlement areas.

  29. Dinges had benefited from that, too, until his personal connections to Germany gave his prosecutors reason to accuse him of anti-communist collaboration. Cf. Berend and Jedig (1991, p. 31) and Krieger and Spack (2006).

  30. According to Berend and Jedig (1991, p. 145), Žirmunskij (1933) is his last article on the settlers’ dialects. Afterwards, he was only concerned with dialects in Germany.

  31. Brandist (2003, p. 216) rightly points to Wrede’s significance in this respect. Whether Fortunatov and his Moscow students had any impact on Žirmunskij’s conception has not been studied yet. Mainly, he referred to German scholars—at least in his writings.

  32. According to Herrgen (2001, p. 1520), Wenker never claimed that he intended to prove the exceptionlessness of phonetic laws. However, in the beginning, he agreed with the Neogrammarians that there are identifiable dialect borders.

  33. This does not mean, however, that dialect phenomena are always older than phenomena of standard language. As Žirmunskij (1936), p. 76) later showed, dialects include lots of younger phenomena. The corresponding phenomena of standard language are older because they are preserved by scripture.

  34. Žirmunskij’s differentiation is a heuristic device to unveil certain developments. It is also important for explaining differences between mixed dialects and standard language (1930, p. 183).

  35. Relying on Paul Kretschmer, Wortgeographie der deutschen Umgangssprache (Göttingen 1918), Žirmunskij distinguishes between lecture/stage language (“Vortragssprache”), public language (“Verkehrssprache”) and family language (“familiärer Sprache”) (1936, p. 95).

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Archival Sources

  • DLA (Marbach): Deutsches Literaturarchiv (Handschriften-Sammlungen), Marbach

  • Letters from Viktor Žirmunskij to Oskar Walzel (A:Walzel).

  • DSA (Marburg): Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas, Universität Marburg

  • Letters from Georg Dinges [to staff of Deutscher Sprachatlas]

  • Letters from Viktor Schirmunski [to staff of Deutscher Sprachatlas]

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Acknowledgments

My thanks go to Craig Brandist for his helpful suggestions and to the Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas Marburg (DSA) and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (DLA) for the right of access to archival materials.

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  1. Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Fachbereich A, Germanistik, Gaußstraße 20, Wuppertal, 42119, Germany

    Matthias Aumüller

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Aumüller, M. Viktor Žirmunskij and German Mundartforschung. Stud East Eur Thought 60, 295–306 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-008-9062-y

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