LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI XXXVI (1996)

LIETUVIŲ KALBA: TYRĖJAI IR TYRIMAI

From the archives From Archives Aus Archiven

Jurgis GERULIS

Leipzig

ON THE EVALUATION OF THE OLD PRUSSIAN ENCHIRIDION*

It is well known and understandable that the language of the Old Prussian Enchiridion is evaluated quite differently. After all, it is impossible to prove with mathematical precision how much the poor language of this text reflects the spoken language of the time, or how much its disordered form should be attributed to Abel Will’s incompetence.

Leskien, Brückner, Berneker, Endzelīns, and others severely censured Willis. Bezzenberger, Trautmann, and perhaps van Wijk adopt a more restrained position, but in essence the two views are not as different as they initially seem when one reads their works. The scholars mentioned would probably endorse what Bezzenberger says in KZ** 41,67: “So that... I may not be misunderstood, I wish to make this quite clear: I too consider his Prussian language dreadful, and his translation often very careless. What matters to me is to formulate the reproach against him and his language accurately.”

As stated, agreement is impossible only as to the degree of the reproach.

Eduard Hermann thinks otherwise. In his article KZ 47, 147 ff., he declares that Abel Willis is a good scholar of the Prussian language, who carried out his work conscientiously and carefully. In other words, this probably means that Willis performed his task as well or as poorly as his contemporaries Mažvydas or Vilentas; indeed, even better, since, I think, Mažvydas’s translations are in places at the very least poor and, without the original, simply incomprehensible. After all, how can one prove false a single expression or form that Hermann considers correct, that is, one supposedly used everywhere around Pobethen circa 1560? This can easily be done, for example, in the 1586 Latvian catechism, on the basis of the living language. Even if I knew that locality, I would still consider it inappropriate to enumerate and more or less convincingly substantiate what, in my view, is non-Prussian in the Enchiridion and thus arose through Willis’s fault. I shall confine myself here to a few essential or purely historical observations, gathered from sources that are in part not easy to understand. I shall touch on the translation itself only occasionally.

* Translated from: Georg Gerullis, Zur Beurteilung des altpreussischen Enchiridions. — Streitberg-Festgabe, Leipzig: Markert u. Petters Verlag, 1924, 96—104.

The editors of this volume of LKK sincerely thank Professor Ikuo Murata (Tokyo), who donated the aforementioned book.

^** KZ = Journal for Comparative Linguistic Research in the Field of Indo-European Languages. Founded by A. Kuhn. Berlin, 1952 ff. — Ed.

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When examining the merits or shortcomings of the Enchiridion, two questions ultimately matter: 1. Did Willis know Prussian well? 2. If he did, is the mixed language of the text an accurate picture of Prussian as spoken in 1560, or is it due to Will as translator’s incompetence?

As is known, Abel Willis was pastor of Pobethen in Sambia (Samland), not far from the “Sudovian Corner” (Sudauischer Winkel). He is first mentioned there in 1554, but had probably been working in that place earlier, since his predecessor Michael Willis left Pobethen in 1540, D. H. Arnoldt, Kurzgefaßte Nachrichten von allen seit der Reformation... in Ostpreußen gestandenen Predigern, 1777, p.29 (Samland). The fact that both had the same surname and, moreover, that in 1527 a certain Mathijus Willis was granted a Kulm-law mill in Pobethen (Altpreuß. Monatschrift 11, 536), suggests that Abel Willis came from a local German family and, since he was entrusted with translating the Enchiridion, he was presumably known to speak Prussian. I shall shortly present documents that confirm this as well.

But how well did Abel Willis know Prussian? Abel Willis’s letter to Funk is often cited in this connection. In it he complains that his interpreter had been taken away (Neue Preuß. Prov.-Blätter, andere Folge VII, 396 ff.); anyone making an objective judgment would draw the same conclusion as Leskien, Die Declination im Slav.-Lit.u.Germ., p. 60, who remarks: “This text probably needs no commentary: the pastor knew no Prussian at all or knew it very badly.” For anyone who has an interpreter preach every Sunday (on weekdays the man had to work his own land or his lord’s), naturally cannot preach in Prussian himself, and so on. Yet I do not understand why Hermann, as well as Bezzenberger and Trautmann, are not troubled by the presence of an interpreter! After all, in this case the letter is worthless compared with what both sides have overlooked. It emerges from the aforementioned work by Arnoldt, op. cit., p. 30, that because of its size, the Pobethen parish had, for a time, another “deacon” (assistant cleric) in addition to its pastor; and under the heading “Diaconi” Arnoldt states: “At first they had an interpreter.” We know for certain that Paul Sunder, Abel Willis’s deacon, when he came to St. Lorenza to serve as pastor in 1558, performed his duties in the synagogue with an interpreter (Arnoldt op. cit., pp. 27, 28); and the visitation records of 1569 (Ostpreuß. Foliant 1277, Königsberg State Archives) show that there was no interpreter in Pobethen at that time (p. 68)¹. Only in that case

¹ K.N. Later, in Ostpreuß. Foliant 1271, p. 187^r, I found this note, dated after 1543 (or 1541?): “P o b e t h e n. Inter Parochum et Molitorem Meister Mats Bübisch oder Will (qui domini Michaelis frater est) discordia Viguit aliquamdiu... Vult enim Molitor domini Michaelis filium habere parochum Pobethensis Ecclesiae. Accusabat parochum Quod... Item das Er Nicht durch Einen Tolcken prediget”. /“Pobethen. The pastor and the miller, Mats Bübisch or Willis (who is Lord Michael’s brother), were at odds for quite some time... For the miller wants Lord Michael’s son to be pastor of the Pobethen church. He accused the pastor of... Also, that he preaches without an interpreter.”/ Did Abel Willis preach in poor Prussian? Nevertheless, it was considered an honor to manage without an interpreter. The bishop makes this clear, op. cit., p. 189^v, during the visitation at Heiligenkreutz (“Sudovian Corner”): “S. Crux. Parochus est diligens in Officio. Exacte Nouit Prutenice. Nec eget Interprete Oder eines Tolcken”. /“S. C r u x. The pastor diligently performs his duties. He knew Prussian well. He does not need an interpreter.”/ Moreover, since this pastor had attracted the visitor’s attention in 1543 (1541?) because of his knowledge of Prussian, he was added to the 1545 translation of the Prussian Catechism. This was probably Caspar Sander, who, according to Arnoldt, op. cit., p. 6, was the first clergyman at Heiligenkreutz known by name. He died

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only if Abel Willis’s successor did not know Prussian could an interpreter have been hired (p. 43²). The fact that he was assisted by a former interpreter, “who probably knew this language better than the others,” and that the latter “revised the translation,” does not allow us to infer any deficiency in his language skills, given the difficulty of the text. Hermann’s criticism in KZ 47, 149 likewise means that Duke Albrecht surely had more Prussian-speaking clergymen and need not have chosen someone “who could not even distinguish the cases and numbers of the Prussian language.” The choice of interpreter was, after all, made by the court preacher Funk, and Willis addresses him as his “godfather.” Funk had won the duke’s greatest favor, but lived in the greatest discord with the nobility and almost all the clergy. Only a few clergymen were Osiandrists and thus members of Funk’s party. In Sambia there were only three, including Abel Willis (Ch. Hartknoch, Preuß. Kirchen-Historia 1686, p. 366). Willis also used the 1558 agenda in his Enchiridion, which many rejected as Osiandrist³. When Funk was ousted by his enemies and even executed in 1566, Willis was thrown into prison (Arnoldt op. cit., p. 29). Given the fanatical hatred that divided Osiandrists and non-Osiandrists in those years, Funk could not have assigned the task to one of his enemies rather than a fellow adherent, quite apart from the fact that the other might have refused to use the 1558 agenda as a basis, which Funk and Duke Albrecht were trying to promote. On these ugly religious disputes, see C. A. Hase, Herzog Albrecht von Preußen und sein Hofprediger, pp. 205 ff.

Only on the basis of direct evidence should we try to answer the question of whether Willis knew Prussian well or poorly, and for now this is impossible. All that has been established so far is that Willis himself conducted services in Prussian.

Thus, the only criterion after all is the language. It is, of course, extraordinarily confused. Cases, endings, and numbers change almost arbitrarily. Anyone who, like me, grew up in a bilingual region will surely remember more than one German pastor who preaches on Sundays in a similar sort of Lithuanian potter’s language. The congregation understands little of this babble. (Forgive the strong expression, but unfortunately it is sometimes apt.) Did the Prussians attending church understand the content any better? My sense of language, which is, of course, entirely subjective, tells me that they could understand even less, especially from this Enchiridion.

Hermann, without doubt, is firmly convinced of the contrary. In his view, the translation is successful, leaving aside minor details, and was genuinely Prussian for its time. To make this seem convincing, he offers various assertions about the Prussian language of that period, some of which had already been advanced by others, though not so unreservedly.

Let us use current scholarship to examine how far he is right!

For now, not only Hermann but all of us say that around 1560 Prussian was a dying or nearly extinct language. This is true only of the period

1575.

² Of the Sembian churches listed in this volume, in 1569 only one, Juditten near Königsberg, did not need an interpreter. In Rudau, Pobethen, and St. Lorenza, such an interpreter would have been needed if the pastor did not know Prussian; consequently, the pastors of that time knew Prussian. In Wargen, Schaken, Postnicken, and Caymen, interpreters were paid salaries.

³ In A fsl Ph XXXIX, 66, I mention an “agenda inspired by Osiander,” but fail to notice that Osiander had already died in 1552.

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in this regard, but not quite in the way we imagine it. In fact, there can be no doubt that around 1700 the Prussian language, generally speaking, was dead (cf. Trautmann, Altpreuß. Sprachdenkmäler, vol. VII). Yet even after 1700 it may have survived in some remote place for several more decades as a household language, as Latvian does today in one or another Curonian (Latvian) family on the Curonian Spit, where Latvian is spoken only at home, and Lithuanian otherwise, or, mutatis mutandis, in some Lithuanian villages in the former Vilna Governorate that had become Belarusian-speaking. Contemporaries often fail to notice such remnants of a language.

The Prussian language probably died out very quickly, since around 1625 it was still relatively widespread; thus it disappeared completely within 75 years! Until now, people have relied on the words in the preface to David’s Psalter of 1625, which say that at that time Prussian was spoken only in places along the coast of Sambia: “the old Prussian language, which some people still use in Prussia, in Fischhausen, in Schaaken and along the coast of Labiau, as well as by the Curonian Lagoon.” However, Dr. Krollmann of Königsberg⁴ found a note dating from around 1620 in the family archive of Prince Dohna, in which the Prussian burggraf Christop Dohna (born 1583) records that, during his childhood, the housemaids had to know three languages—German, Polish, and Prussian—in order to communicate with the servants. His uncle, Burggraf Fabianus Dohna, had told him that when Melchior, Baron of Rödern (cf. Allgem. Deutsche Biographie 29, 23), visited the Dohnas in Mohrungen in 1581, she surprised him with her Prussian. Since he learned languages very quickly, he later wrote several letters in Prussian to the young count’s mother. Thus, in 1581, even in the western part of the Prussian-speaking area, in Pomesania, Prussian was still alive; and if, during the count’s childhood, around 1590, the Prussian servants were still not bilingual, then around 1620 the Prussians, alongside German, were still using their old language as well. Arnoldt also confirms this, op. cit., p. 28, stating that in St. Lorenze, situated a direct 7 km from Pobethen, sermons had to be given with an interpreter until 1602. Thus, in general, the Prussians of Sambia became bilingual only after 1600, and no longer needed an interpreter during services. The surnames of the inhabitants of Prussian villages at that time (in the visitation registers) should not mislead us. Almost all are Christian and German, whereas the 1404 register of Sembian farms and plots of land, as well as later documents, are written mostly in Prussian. This was the consequence of the decree (1425) rigorously enforced by Michael, Bishop of Sambia (H. F. Jacobson, Geschichte der Quellen des Kirchenrechts I, 1, p. 127, in the appendix): “ut pueros suos per corum plebanos baptisatos nec in fluminibus nec aliis rebaptisent aut alia nomina imponant quam eis in baptismo sunt imposita”. /“that they should not rebaptize their children, baptized by their parish priests, either in rivers or elsewhere, or give them names other than those given to them at baptism”./

Nevertheless, already in Willi’s time one can speak of the Prussian language as dying out just as reasonably as one might speak of Lithuanian today in East Prussia, south of the Nemunas. But what Hermann and others mean when they say “dying out” cannot be accepted until evidence has been provided.

Of course, in this period of the language all this may have been possible, which an otherwise well-disposed reader regards as the translator’s greatest errors. For example, “Therefore we must fear his anger” reads as follows in Abel Willis’s Prussian translation: “Stesse paggan turrimai mes noūmas biāwi per tennēison nertien (Trautmann op. cit.

⁴ Let thanks be given once again here for the kind communication.

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29,11). In Latin it would be:... debemus nos timere per eorum iracundiam. Or “To masters and mistresses” Steinmans (plural dative) Buta Rikians (plural accusative) the Buttas waispattin (singular accusative). The feminine singular genitive of the pronoun stas, “which,” varies especially widely. In Willis’s translation it can take the following forms: steises, stesses, stēisei, steisei, steise, stessei, stesse, stēison, stēisan, steison.

Where does anything like this occur in a living language!? Surely the same situation ought to recur today in the southern part of Prussian Lithuania, but there Lithuanian is dying out in quite another way: after 1750, Donelaitis writes his songs in the splendid Lithuanian language in Tolminkiemis, where by about 1850 Lithuanian is already absent. Abel Willis translates in 1550–1561, thus also about 100 years before the language disappears. South of the Nemunas there are still villages where grandparents speak Lithuanian fluently, of course without confusing forms as Willis does, but using many Germanisms in their vocabulary, even in everyday expressions. Their children still understand their native language; some also speak it fluently, but very reluctantly. Their grandchildren know only German.

Hermann says that around 1560 the Prussian language was a mixed language. Besides German, it was influenced by Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Sudovian. Yet there was no Polish⁵ or Lithuanian influence in Sambia; the latter never penetrated west beyond the Deime, except in a few settlements of political refugees or prisoners from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. And the Curonians (already Latvianized?) lived in Sambia around 1550, especially on the coast, but only Vagi, Non diu Uno in loco Manentes /Wanderers, those who do not remain long in one place/ (Bezzenberger, Kur. Nehrung, p. 264/104/). In any case, I can find neither Lithuanian nor Latvian in Willi’s Prussian, while the Polonisms are old. That leaves only the Sudovians. For nearly 300 years they lived near Pobethen, and they could even be found in the parish of Pobethen (cf. below). But let us hear what a former rector of the Thomasschule in Leipzig and then pastor in Königsberg⁶ wrote about them in 1535: Prutenis et populus et regio Sudawen vocatur,... habetque supra XXXII vicos... /The Sudovian people and their land are called Prussian... and they have more than 32 villages.../ (A. Aurifaber, Succini historia /History of Amber/, Königsberg 1551, chapter 2, gives only 20.) Sunt autem indigenae, quorum pauci admodum germanicam linguam novēre, sed suam quandam linguam habent barbaram, qua etiam reliquum fere Prutenorum vulgus utitur. Pertinaciter semper studuit haec gens maiorum suorum vestitum, ritus et cultus servare, nec iunxerunt cum finitimis Prutenis matrimonia... Haec, inquam, et alia id genus multa pertinaciter servaverunt illi, donec cum vicinis Prutenis tandem ab annis viginti, instantibus praefectis, coniugia contrahere coacti sunt. Hinc etiam factum est, ut ab antiquis ritibus suis paulatim recesserint: aegre tamen adhuc a prisca sua idololatria et avitis superstitionibus abstinent, neque ex animo vel papae prius paruerunt, ut nunc evangelio assentiuntur plerique eorum, sed veteres suorum cultus tacitis suffragiis probare non desinunt. /They are indigenous inhabitants

⁵ When Praetorius writes in Acta Borussica II, 82 that the Prussian language in Sambia had become a “confusum Chaos” because of “Silesian and Polish raftsmen,” Bezzenberger rightly applies this remark to maritime connections (Kur. Nehrung 266(106)). There was no place for “raftsmen” in Sambia itself.

⁶ In the publication Festschrift A. Bezzenberger, p. 44 ff., I unfortunately overlooked this note.

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inhabitants, only a few of whom knew German, but [they spoke] some barbarous language of their own, which was used by almost all the other Prussians as well. This tribe always stubbornly sought to preserve the dress, religious customs, and way of life of their ancestors, and did not intermarry with their Prussian neighbours... I maintain that this and many other things were tenaciously preserved by this people until at last, for twenty years, they were compelled to marry Prussian neighbours, through the intervention of the prefects. It came about that they gradually departed from their old customs, yet to this day they have difficulty refraining from their former paganism and old superstitions. Many of them neither formerly willingly obeyed the Pope nor now sincerely embrace the Gospel, but secretly continue to observe their old religious customs.” / (P. Tschackert, Urkundenbuch zur Reformationsgeschichte des Herzogthums Preussen II, 335 t.). Thus, ten years before the printing of the first and second Prussian catechisms, only a few Sudovians knew German. They were generally so isolated that the authorities had to force them to marry even Prussians; this is mentioned in the preface to the first and second catechisms: But the Sudovians, although their language is somewhat rougher, nevertheless understand this Prussian language in which the catechism is printed, and probably also use and understand all its words.

Ir C. Hennenbergeris (Erclerung der Preüssischen grössern Landtaffel 1595, p. 445) pasakoja mums, kai gintarininkas Joh. Fuchsas († 1567) Merteno Windtmüllerio (1564 m. buvo Knypavos (Kneiphof) miesto tarybos narys) garbei liepė pakviesti 10 sūduvaičių šokėjų, nei viena iš jų nemokėjo vokiškai.

From these two records we learn two things. First, that the Sudovian language could not have corrupted the Prussian language. It was itself only a dialect of Prussian. Does this also apply to Pastor Heiligenkreutze, in the midst of the Sudovians (Ostpreuss. Fol. 1271, p. 189^v): ”Exacte Nouit P r u t e n i c e. Nec eget Interprete Oder eines Tolcken”. / ”He knew P r u s s i a n perfectly. He needs no interpreter”. / Then, at least, the Sudovian language could in no way have been Germanized. These two accounts contradict that claim. But Pobethen bordered on Sudovia, and Sudovians lived even in the parish of Pobethen itself. When, in 1520 and again in 1531, six or eight Prussian villages in the parish of Pobethen held a pagan sacrificial feast⁷ (Lucas David, Preuß. Chronik ed. E. Hennig I, 117 t.t.; C. Hennenberger op. cit., p. 353), one Sudovian played the part of a priest and, for this, had to do public penance in the Pobethen church throughout 1531 (Ostpreuß. Foliant B 186, fol. 284^v). The pastor of Laigyčiai (Legitten), who had been summoned, was to rebuke the sinners thunderously. The sermon, of course, had to be preached in Prussian.

Under these circumstances, is it plausible that after thirty years the language of the same people had deteriorated so much that Hermann describes it as a mixed language?

To the extent that it had been Germanized—and no doubt a good deal of this had happened in the dictionary—it could only have been influenced by Low German. But Luther’s German predominates in the Enchiridion! The riddle of this translation solves itself if we agree with what every objective reader of this text first

⁷Likewise, in the parish of Girmava (Germau), and thus even in the “Sudovian corner,” about 40 Prussians were punished in 1546 for taking part in such a sacrifice (Preuß. Chronik. des Joh. Freyberg fol. 113^r, manuscript in the Königsberg City Library). A similar incident occurred in 1571 in Tepliava (Tapiau) (Töppen, Neue Preuß. Prov. Bl. /1846/ II, 227).

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realizes: the translator knew too little Prussian for a task of this kind. I would gladly add that he may have been able to converse fluently, roughly as a Baltic German landowner understands Latvian. But that is not enough to speak grammatically correctly or to express something in writing, especially when the text is so convoluted. Even a good translator could not have helped much here, because he did not understand the meaning of the difficult passages. Willis or his translator heard the intonation well. The Prussians of Pobethen probably pronounced the words very clearly. But how can this be reconciled with a “corrupted” language?

Of course, for those who have to describe Willis’s translation as poor, not everything that differs from Lithuanian or Latvian is erroneous and un-Prussian. Moreover, the Prussian language has too many striking features absent from Lithuanian and Latvian. All the more regrettable, then, that Willis’s Enchiridion remains so ambiguous; for it is hardly possible, on the basis of Willis’s poor work, to determine satisfactorily which features are purely Prussian and distinct from Lithuanian and Latvian, and which should be attributed solely to the influence of German proper, that is, Low German.

Translated by Nijolė Čepienė*

LETTER FROM JURGIS GERULIS TO JONAS JABLONSKIS

The library of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore holds (F 52—199) a letter from J. Gerulis to J. Jablonskis dated November 29, 1922. The letter is interesting for J. Gerulis’s views on the standard Lithuanian language and questions of spelling, as well as on account of his own language. The language and punctuation of the published letter have not been corrected (only a couple of obvious typographical errors have been corrected).

A. Sabaliauskas

29. XI. 22

Dear Sir,

Many heartfelt thanks for sending me your “Grammar of the Lithuanian Language.” Would it not be a good idea to sell your books, and a few others such as Būga’s “Language and Antiquity,” etc., in Germany as well? Švyturys and the Publishing Commission could set up a “commission” for such books with Vinter in Heidelberg. It is not enough to write good books; they must also be publicized! Of course, this must be done not for the authors’ honor, but for Lithuania. The world must learn that quite serious work is being done in Lithuania, though it did not know of it. Such dilettantes as that Basanavičius bring us shame! (I know that B. worked more steadfastly for Lithuania than a hundred others, but the world reads his writings about the Thracians and laughs at such a “Litauischer Sprachforscher.”) As for spelling, when Būga was staying at my house, I sternly urged him to join forces with you and publish a short spelling manual. My opinion is this: a spelling manual, even an imperfect one, is much better than one that, admittedly, without agreement¹

* The quotations from Latin were translated by Kazys Eigminas.

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