Luther, vol. 5 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

When all is said, however, the secret of such success is not to be entirely understood unless we also take into account the religious position Luther occupied in the eyes of his followers. All who venerated him as having thrown a new light on religion, valued and honoured the language used by a mind so imperious, so strong and versatile, and, when it so pleased, so sympathetic. H. Böhmer says very truly of the old German Protestants: “Luther became for the Germans the authority on speech because he was their supreme authority on faith and personal conduct. Had he not been a religious reformer and had he not bequeathed to Evangelical Germany in his Bible a book, which, on account of its religious importance was bound to be looked upon as a model of language, he would never have exercised so powerful an influence on the written and spoken language.”[1983]

Nevertheless, to assert, that, by his German Bible and his other writings Luther was the actual founder of New High German is to go too far, quite apart from the fact that German, as now written, is no longer identical with the German of Luther’s Bible and other writings. We cannot take seriously Grimm’s assertions that “New High German may in point of fact be called the Protestant dialect,” or that “Luther’s language, owing to its noble, almost marvellous purity and its mighty influence, was both the germ and the foundation of the New High German tongue.”[1984]

“Protestants,” says Pastor Risch, “have hitherto been disposed to undervalue the literary use made of the German language before Luther’s day, particularly in the religious domain, and to exaggerate Luther’s importance in the history of the tongue. Only in so far as he succeeded in seizing upon and bringing out all the forces and possibilities latent in the language, was it possible for his work to be truly creative and epoch-making. To catch the idiom of the people, not to force a new language upon it with his German Bible, was, on his own admission, Luther’s aim. The German language prepared the way for Luther to a greater extent than at first sight appears.”[1985]

Two other considerations will serve still further to curtail the importance of Luther’s services to the German tongue.

First of all it must be pointed out that many very coarse elements found their way into his popular works, and thus, unhappily, into the written language, and, secondly, that a large number of words and phrases peculiar to South Germany and which were accordingly unknown to Luther, find, for this reason, no place in works, with the result that the German language suffered.

We may speak with less reserve of the merits of the new translation so far as it is based on the original languages of the Bible, and on the Latin Vulgate then in general use. Even before Luther started on his work attention had been called to the original text; indeed, as it happens, the scholar who was the primary cause of Luther’s studying the original language was his Catholic opponent, Erasmus, who himself brought out the Greek edition of the New Testament. To Luther, however, belongs the honour of having been the first to tread the new philological paths with a German version.

In his somewhat hurried version of the New Testament he used the Greek text as well as the Vulgate. In the same way, in his translation of the Old Testament, he went back to the original so far as his knowledge of Hebrew allowed, and, where this was insufficient, sought the help of others.

The principle he followed, viz. to make the Bible plain to the German reader by explaining its meaning, so far as this can be done by a translation, brings us, however, face to face with other questions.

Luther had a high opinion of the accuracy and clearness of his work. He says of it: “I can with a good conscience testify that I have shown the utmost fidelity and diligence therein, and have never thought to deceive.”[1986]

“No one would believe what labour it has cost except those who worked with us,” so he said in his last years according to Mathesius, when looking back on the success of his undertaking. “This Bible—not that I would praise myself but the work speaks for itself—is so good that it is better than the Greek or Latin translation, and more is to be found in it than in all the commentaries. For we remove the hindrances and stumbling-blocks out of the way so that other people may be able to read without difficulty.”[1987] Reducing this eulogy to its proper proportions we may indeed allow that Luther eliminated the “hindrances and stumbling-blocks” from his German translation, being no literalist, but anxious above all to put into plain German what sounded strange or difficult.