[6] U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations, Bulletins Nos. 63, 69, 109, 136, 175. For a description of the respiration calorimeter here mentioned see also publication No. 42 of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
[7] Ztschr. Biol. 21 (1885), p. 377.
[8] Connecticut (Storrs) Agricultural Experiment Station Report (1899), 73.
[9] One ounce equals 28.35 grams.
[10] As the chief function of both fats and carbohydrates is to furnish energy, their exact proportion in the diet is of small account. The amount of either may vary largely according to taste, available supply, or other condition, as long as the total amount of both is sufficient, together with the protein to furnish the required energy.
DIETRICH, CHRISTIAN WILHELM ERNST (1712-1774), German painter, was born at Weimar, where he was brought up early to the profession of art by his father Johann George, then painter of miniatures to the court of the duke. Having been sent to Dresden to perfect himself under the care of Alexander Thiele, he had the good fortune to finish in two hours, at the age of eighteen, a picture which attracted the attention of the king of Saxony. Augustus II. was so pleased with Dietrich’s readiness of hand that he gave him means to study abroad, and visit in succession the chief cities of Italy and the Netherlands. There he learnt to copy and to imitate masters of the previous century with a versatility truly surprising. Winckelmann, to whom he had been recommended, did not hesitate to call him the Raphael of landscape. Yet in this branch of his practice he merely imitated Salvator Rosa and Everdingen. He was more successful in aping the style of Rembrandt, and numerous examples of this habit may be found in the galleries of St Petersburg, Vienna and Dresden. At Dresden, indeed, there are pictures acknowledged to be his, bearing the fictitious dates of 1636 and 1638, and the name of Rembrandt. Among Dietrich’s cleverest reproductions we may account that of Ostade’s manner in the “Itinerant Singers” at the National Gallery. His skill in catching the character of the later masters of Holland is shown in candlelight scenes, such as the “Squirrel and the Peep-Show” at St Petersburg, where we are easily reminded of Godfried Schalcken. Dietrich tried every branch of art except portraits, painting Italian and Dutch views alternately with Scripture scenes and still life. In 1741 he was appointed court painter to Augustus III. at Dresden, with an annual salary of 400 thalers (£60), conditional on the production of four cabinet pictures a year. This condition, no doubt, accounts for the presence of fifty-two of the master’s panels and canvases in one of the rooms at the Dresden museum. Dietrich, though popular and probably the busiest artist of his time, never produced anything of his own; and his imitations are necessarily inferior to the originals which he affected to copy. His best work is certainly that which he gave to engravings. A collection of these at the British Museum, produced on the general lines of earlier men, such as Ostade and Rembrandt, reveal both spirit and skill. Dietrich, after his return from the Peninsula, generally signed himself “Dietericij,” and with this signature most of his extant pictures are inscribed. He died at Dresden, after he had successively filled the important appointments of director of the school of painting at the Meissen porcelain factory and professor of the Dresden academy of arts.
DIETRICH OF BERN, the name given in German popular poetry to Theodoric the Great. The legendary history of Dietrich differs so widely from the life of Theodoric that it has been suggested that the two were originally unconnected. Medieval chroniclers, however, repeatedly asserted the identity of Dietrich and Theodoric, although the more critical noted the anachronisms involved in making Ermanaric (d. 376) and Attila (d. 453) contemporary with Theodoric (b. 455). That the legend is based on vague historical reminiscences is proved by the retention of the names of Theodoric (Thiuda-reiks, Dietrich) and his father Theudemir (Dietmar), by Dietrich’s connexion with Bern (Verona) and Raben (Ravenna). Something of the Gothic king’s character descended to Dietrich, familiarly called the Berner, the favourite of German medieval saga heroes, although his story did not leave the same mark on later German literature as did that of the Nibelungs. The cycle of songs connected with his name in South Germany is partially preserved in the Heldenbuch (q.v.) in Dietrich’s Flucht, the Rabenschlacht and Alpharts Tod; but it was reserved for an Icelandic author, writing in Norway in the 13th century, to compile, with many romantic additions, a consecutive account of Dietrich. In this Norse prose redaction, known as the Vilkina Saga, or more correctly the Thidrekssaga, is incorporated much extraneous matter from the Nibelungen and Wayland legends, in fact practically the whole of south German heroic tradition.
There are traces of a form of the Dietrich legend in which he was represented as starting out from Byzantium, in accordance with historical tradition, for his conquest of Italy. But this early disappeared, and was superseded by the existing legend, in which, perhaps by an “epic fusion” with his father Theudemir, he was associated with Attila, and then by an easy transition with Ermanaric. Dietrich was driven from his kingdom of Bern by his uncle Ermanaric. After years of exile at the court of Attila he returned with a Hunnish army to Italy, and defeated Ermanaric in the Rabenschlacht, or battle of Ravenna. Attila’s two sons, with Dietrich’s brother, fell in the fight, and Dietrich returned to Attila’s court to answer for the death of the young princes. This very improbable renunciation of the advantages of his victory suggests that in the original version of the story the Rabenschlacht was a defeat. In the poem of Ermenrichs Tod he is represented as slaying Ermanaric, as in fact Theodoric slew Odoacer. “Otacher” replaces Ermanaric as his adversary in the Hildebrandslied, which relates how thirty years after the earlier attempt he reconquered his Lombard kingdom. Dietrich’s long residence at Attila’s court represents the youth and early manhood of Theodoric spent at the imperial court and fighting in the Balkan peninsula, and, in accordance with epic custom, the period of exile was adorned with war-like exploits, with fights with dragons and giants, most of which had no essential connexion with the cycle. The romantic poems of König Laurin, Sigenot, Eckenlied and Virginal are based largely on local traditions originally independent of Dietrich. The court of Attila (Etzel) was a ready bridge to the Nibelungen legend. In the final catastrophe he was at length compelled, after steadily holding aloof from the combat, to avenge the slaughter of his Amelungs by the Burgundians, and delivered Hagen bound into the hands of Kriemhild. The flame breath which anger induced from him shows the influence of pure myth, but the tales of his demonic origin and of his being carried off by the devil in the shape of a black horse may safely be put down to the clerical hostility to Theodoric’s Arianism.