HARALD BICHLMEIER Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg Fields of research: onomastics (toponymy), historical phonology of the Germanic languages, Indo-European linguistics, Aljamiado-texts. DOI: https://doi.org/10.35321/all82-11

Inġė Lukšaitė

THE REFORMATION IN THE GRAND DUCHY OF LITHUANIA AND PRUSSIAN LITHUANIA (FROM THE 1520S TO THE BEGINNING OF THE 17TH CENTURY)

Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH 2017. Gebunden, 662 Seiten. ISBN 978–3–96023–064–9

The book presented here by the distinguished historian Inġė Lukšaitė is a translation of the Lithuanian edition published in 1999 (Lukšaitė 1999). In the same year as the German book, 2017, the same author also published in Lithuania a more popular (without footnotes and considerably shorter) account of the Reformation in Lithuania (in the sense of Little and Greater Lithuania, or the Duchy of Prussia and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; Lukšaitė 2017).

The German-language book has a long history, which is why particular attention will be paid here to how it was rendered into German, rather than to the book’s content itself. It had already been translated by Gottfried Schneider in 2002–2003 (p. 10) or 2003 (p. 3), but apparently was not printed at the time; it was later “revised and

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partly rewritten in 2016” (oversticker on the title page, p. 3; original text beneath the sticker: “Translated by Lilija Künstling and Gottfried Schneider”). Irene Dingel then further advanced its publication (p. 11), and Jürgen Hennings eventually compiled the sources and bibliography (pp. 587–631) (p. 11), though this was done “on the basis of the footnotes and the list of abbreviations in the Lithuanian original edition” (p. 587).

Thus, before its completion (the foreword is dated September 2016; p. 11), the book passed through several hands, which apparently did not handle the material in an entirely consistent manner:

This particularly concerns the treatment of research literature added since the Lithuanian version was written and incorporated into the German text (p. 10): the actual bibliography (compiled, as mentioned above, on the basis of Lukšaitė 1999) unfortunately contains no titles published in 1998 or later. These are cited only in the footnotes. When cited repeatedly, such works are generally referred to by short title—but there is no reference to the footnote containing the full bibliographic information, leaving the reader on their own. There are also instances in which a work is cited in full in a footnote, even though it can be found in the bibliography.

Another problem with the German adaptation is the way place names and personal names are used. In Lithuania, or in Lithuanian, Lithuanianized forms of non-Lithuanian names are commonly used—even if Lithuanianization consists only in assigning a name to a particular stem class by adding an ending, thereby making it declinable. Such Lithuanianizations are inappropriate in a German edition. German-language scholarly literature primarily gives the name forms actually attested. Specifically, if a Pole, or indeed a Lithuanian from the Grand Duchy (even if polonized only by administrative scribes), appears in the sources exclusively under a Polish (and/or Latin) name form, then that form should be used rather than a Lithuanian one (even if the latter can be reconstructed with good reason; exceptions might include internationally familiar [reconstructed] Lithuanian name forms of well-known people such as Martynas Mažvydas, etc.). This applies all the more when the Lithuanian name form is uncommon in the German-speaking world: Radziwiłł is familiar—but Radvila? The whole thing becomes even more extreme when an entirely artificial name form is given for Prussians (consistently “Pru zzen” and “pruzzisch” in the book), even if only in parentheses: what is one to make of the Prussian interpreter Paul Megott

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(who may at most have written himself in Prussian as *Pauli[a]s *Megot[t]i[a]s, if he ever did so at all) the artificial Lithuanian name form Paulius Megotas?

A similar problem also arises with some place names: certain German exonyms for Polish place names are quite common, especially when discussing the 16th century rather than the present day: Danzig, Posen, Krakau und Gnesen, for example, clearly deserve preference here over Gdańsk, Poznań, Kraków, Gniezno; the adjective “Gniezener” (p. 154; apparently based on a blend of Polish Gniezno and German Gnesen) sounds highly alien; if used, it would presumably have to be consistently Gnieznoer.

A similar case is the name of the city known in the German-speaking world primarily as Brest (Litovsk). The (almost consistent) use of the present-day Belarusian name form “Biaresce” (better: Bjaresce < Old Russian Berestьe)—probably little known in Germany outside Slavicist circles—already seems somewhat alienating, and in the phrase “Biaresce (Brester) Bible” (p. 579) ultimately strikingly odd. Compare, however, the introductory remarks on the “Index of Persons” (pp. 633–651) for the approach taken.

It is clear that the treatment of names in translations is always problematic (especially in [Central] Eastern Europe), since much that relates to names is charged with national(ist) significance. But for a book to be readable, one should take into account either the conventions of the target language and/or those of the period under discussion. Vilnius is clearly the more common form nowadays than Wilna, but Gnesen, Posen, Danzig, Krakau, Brest are the usual forms for these Polish cities and the Belarusian city in question—and this may be different in 50 years.

And another tradition in Lithuanian historiographical literature, aimed at wider dissemination, seems to live on in the translation: in the 1999 Lithuanian edition, all quotations from the original texts are translated into Lithuanian (and the original text is not even cited in the footnote). This is almost always the case in the German edition as well; only in a few instances is the original Early New High German version of the text (in slightly modernized orthography) provided. Occasionally the original text appears in a footnote, but often there is only a reference to the edition, and the language of the original is not clear in every case. In principle, for translations of this kind, it would be desirable to provide the original quotation in a footnote.

Overall, one must probably conclude that the book would have benefited from a thorough further review; this might also have helped avoid such nonsensical word breaks as “Pr–zemyszler” (p. 205) and “Alo–ysius” (p. 276). Comparable errors also occur in the “Index of Geographical Names and Places” (pp. 653–662), where, for example, under Breslau, reference is made to “Wrocław” and

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under Brest, “Biarescie” (p. 654) is given as a reference, and where, in the same place, under Demme, Dnepr, Elbe, the addition “(Fluß)” appears in the old orthography, whereas the book is otherwise set in the new spelling.

After this detailed treatment of formalities, which are likely attributable primarily to the translators and editors, now to the book itself.

Es ist eine recht getreue Übersetzung der Version von 1999, die Einteilung und Kapitelzahl wurde bis auf wenige Ausnahmen beibehalten, die Überschriften sind teils wörtliche Übersetzungen der ursprünglichen Kapitelüberschriften geblieben, teils modifiziert worden. Die Darstellung ist weitgehend chronologisch und springt zwischen den Entwicklungen im Herzogtum Preußen und denen im Großfürstentum hin und her. Die Darstellung ist (abgesehen von den o.a. Namenschwankungen u.ä.) gut lesbar und systematisch aufgebaut. Einzig die bisweilen auftretende Fülle an interagierenden Personen und Orten bereitet bisweilen Mühe – aber das liegt in der Sache begründet, nicht in der Darstellung. Der Leser erhält einen vollständigen Überblick über die Entwicklung und Wirkung der Reformation in diesen beiden Ländern (mit gelegentlichen Ausblicken auf die Entwicklung in Polen), auf die verschiedenen Richtungen innerhalb der Reformation (Lutheraner vs. Reformierte und schließlich „Arianer“) und deren jeweilige Schwerpunkte und Entwicklungslinien. Erstaunlich kurz wird die Entstehung von Büchern bzw. des Buchdrucks in Preußisch und Litauisch in Königsberg behandelt (S. 229–249), die ja doch einen Meilenstein in der kulturellen Entwicklung der Region darstellt. Sehr lesenswert und informativ ist das abschließende kulturund sozialgeschichtlich orientierte Kapitel „Die Bedeutung der Reformation“ (S. 493–586), das sich in erster Linie den Entwicklungslinien innerhalb des Großfürstentums widmet.

What the book lacks (and already lacked in 1999) are (modern) maps that would allow readers to orient themselves properly as to which region is being discussed. Most German readers interested in the subject surely have no trouble locating Danzig, Königsberg, Klaipėda, Kaunas, and Vilnius—but where are all the country estates and villages with Lutheran or Reformed churches that are listed, for example, for Žemaitija (pp. 275ff.)?

While the development of the Reformation in the Duchy of Prussia has already been presented several times in German, sometimes in considerable detail, no comparable account of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had existed until now. Such an account is now available here—as is an account that fully presents the interaction of processes in the Duchy and the Grand Duchy, from their beginnings over the course of roughly a century. Particularly illuminating are the chapter-by-chapter comparisons of parallel and divergent developments

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within and between the individual confessions in the two neighboring states.

In other words, the book is good and was, to some extent, a desideratum in the German-speaking world; however, one might have wished that the ‘technical’ realization (in the broadest sense) of this account in its German version had been more carefully considered and carried out with a little more thoroughness—it deserved that.

LITERATURE

Lukšaitė Ingė 1999: Reformacija Lietuvos Didžiojoje Kunigaikštystėje ir Mažojoje Lietuvoje: XVI a. trečias dešimtmetis–XVII a. pirmas dešimtmetis, Vilnius: Baltos lankos. (Geb., 647 S.)

Lukšaitė Ingė 2017: Kai tikėjimas keitė pasaulį... Reformacija Lietuvoje, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos centras. (Geb., 239 S.)

Submitted on 3 April 2020.

HARALD BICHLMEIER Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg Orientalisches Institut Seminar für Indogermanistik und Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Ludwig-Wucherer-Str. 2, 06108 Halle (Saale) [email protected]

Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften Arbeitsstelle Jena Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen Zwätzengasse 12a, 07743 Jena [email protected]

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