Frydrichas Vilhelmas Hakas. „Vocabvlarivm Litthvanico–Germanicvm, et Germanico–Litthvanicvm… Nebst einem Anhang einer kurtzgefaßten Litthauischen Grammatic“ (1730)

VINCENTAS DROTVINAS Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences Frydrichas Vilhelmas Hakas VOCABVLARIVM LITTHVANICO-GERMANICVM, ET GERMANICO-LITTHVANICVM... NEBST EINEM ANHANG EINER KURTZGEFASSTEN LITTHAVISCHEN GRAMMATIC (1730) I. Critical edition; edited by Vilma Zubaitienė. Vilnius: Vilnius University Press, 2012, 789 pp. II. Study, indexes, and lists; edited by Vilma Zubaitienė, who wrote the study and compiled the indexes and lists. Vilnius: Vilnius University Press, 2012, 335 pp. ISBN 9786-09-158-7 Georgas Heinrichas Ferdinandas Nesselmannas, the author of “Wörterbuch der Littauischen Sprache” (Wörterbuch der Littauischen Sprache. Königsberg, 1851), described the first edition of Frydrichas Vilhelmas Hakas’s bilingual (Lithuanian–German and German–Lithuanian) dictionary, with an appendix on Lithuanian grammar, as lexically poor. Kazimieras Būga, who had likewise undertaken an internship in Königsberg, assessed it similarly: it was, he wrote, “a meagre little dictionary of little value,” in the preface to the first fascicle of Lietuvių kalbos žodyno in 1924. For readers to better understand why such a source is being studied and republished, it is worth briefly recalling the historical and cultural conditions that led to the emergence of Lithuanian dictionaries and grammars in the Kingdom of Prussia in the first half of the eighteenth century. There, the Lithuanian districts were the first to fall victim to the great plague and famine that raged in 1709–1711; about a third of their inhabitants perished, and more than 20 churches lost their preachers. To restore the region’s economic strength, King Friedrichas Wilhelmas I worked to expand the training of qualified personnel. By royal decree, the Lithuanian Language Seminar, established in Königsberg in 1718, was tasked with training Evangelical Lutheran pastors for Lithuanian parishes and publishing religious texts in Lithuanian. Recenzijos / Reviews 183 VINCENTAS DROTVINAS A similar Lithuanian Language Seminar (Littauisches Seminar, Seminarium Lithuanicum), whose aim was to train Lutheran Evangelical preachers and teachers of a pietist orientation, began operating at the University of Halle in 1727. By 1740, about 40 future pastors of Lithuania Minor had studied there. Some came from a Lithuanian-speaking milieu, that is, from Lithuania Minor; some had already studied Lithuanian at the University of Königsberg. The teaching and learning of Lithuanian at the Halle Lithuanian Language Seminar also served a practical purpose. Successful learning required Lithuanian-language teachers, grammars, and dictionaries. Lithuanian could be learned from one of three Lithuanian grammars (Daniel Klein’s Grammatica Lithuanica, 1653; Compendium Lithuanico-Germanicum, 1654; and Sapūnas–Schultz’s Compendium grammaticæ lithvanicæ, 1673). However, until then there had been no printed Lithuanian dictionary suitable for German speakers. Therefore, the University of Königsberg sent Halle a manuscript German–Lithuanian dictionary by an unknown author; a copy of it is now held in the manuscript department of the library of the Francke Foundations (Franckesche Stiftungen) at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. The dictionary was copied out on 18 June 1728 and is attributed to the hand of the seminar instructor Johann Richter. This dictionary, however, apparently did not meet the seminar’s needs for teaching Lithuanian. Once the need for a more suitable dictionary had been recognized, the Vocabularium... by Frydrichas Vilhelmas Hakas, associate lecturer at the Lithuanian Language Seminar, was prepared and published fairly quickly (Halle, 1730). In the dictionary’s preface, the leader of the Halle Pietists, Gotthilfas Augustas Francke, summarized the Lithuanian Language Seminar’s successful work over three years: 10 people were already working as preachers in Lithuanian parishes, while another 13 students were studying. He also indicated the importance of this publication and its sources, and publicly praised Hakas’s contribution as associate lecturer. Although the dictionary and grammar made learning Lithuanian easier, they did not ensure the seminar’s continued development: its student body was replenished only with difficulty, and its most active members saw no further career opportunities at the seminar. Richter returned to Lithuania Minor in the summer of 1728; similarly, F. V. Hakas, appointed to accompany the Salzburg colonists to Lithuania Minor, chose a Lithuanian parish in 1732, was ordained as a pastor and, despite Francke’s disappointment at losing a Lithuanian Language Seminar instructor, did not return to Halle. The publication under review consists of two volumes. Volume I begins with the elements required for a critical edition: a preface (pp. 6–7), editorial principles (pp. 8–9), followed by the dictionary’s Latin abbreviations (pp. 10–11), the grammar’s Latin abbreviations (p. 13), and the grammar’s contents with references to the pages of the original grammar (pp. 14–15). The core of the volume consists of facsimiles of Vocabularium... (based on the copy held by Vilnius University Library, with diacritics added by hand) and a diplomatic transcription. Vilma Zubaitienė prepared the dictionary transcription, textual and critical commentary (pp. 17–487), and the grammar transcription with subject-specific commentary (pp. 489–789). Liucija Citavičiūtė translated the dictionary preface from German, and the grammar (pp. 701–789) was translated by 184 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Frydri̇chas Vilhelmas Hakas Vocabularium Litthvanico-Germanicum, et Germanico-Litthvanicum… Nebst einem Anhang einer kurtzgefaßten Litthauischen Grammatic (1730) Lina Plaušinait y tė. Thus, the publication offers a choice: readers may consult the original dictionary text reproduced in Fraktur, its diplomatic transcription, or the more accessible translation of the grammar. The second volume of the publication (II. Studija, indeksai, rodyklės) is devoted to the study and scholarly description of the dictionary and grammar. The volume consists of V. Zubaitienė’s study “Frydrichas Vilhelmas Hakas’s Dictionary and Grammar: Historical Circumstances of Publication, Structure, and Relationship to Sources” (pp. 7–123), and indexes, three of which are devoted to the dictionary’s Lithuanian lexicon (the first lists the dictionary’s common words (pp. 141–262); the second, proper words from the New Testament (identified as place names and miscellaneous words) (pp. 263–265); and the third, the dictionary’s word combinations (pp. 266–274)). Two further indexes are devoted to Hakas’s grammar: an index of common words (pp. 278–311) and an index of proper words (p. 312). These are followed by an index of grammatical topics (pp. 313–317) and two bilingual glossaries of grammatical terms (Latin–Lithuanian, pp. 318–322, and Lithuanian–Latin, pp. 323–327). All these features are intended to help the reader: they provide a kind of user’s guide. The second volume (and the two-volume work as a whole) concludes with a fairly concise summary (Zusammenfassung, pp. 328–329) and two indexes (personal names, pp. 330–333, and place names, pp. 334–335). The scholarly editor of the entire publication is Bonifacas Stundžia. The author draws her final research conclusions (II, pp. 122–123), stating that Hakas’s Vocabularium… is the first printed bilingual dictionary in East Prussia (that is, the dictionary has two parts: the Lithuanian–German part contains 4,886 Lithuanian words, while the German–Lithuanian part has 500 fewer). It is the first dictionary to provide a Lithuanian-language register with German equivalents, with minor lexical differences between the two parts. In terms of macrostructure, it is a dictionary of religious vocabulary based on the lexicon of the New Testament (1727) and the Psalter (1728), intended for the instructional purposes of the Halle Lithuanian Language Seminar. From a lexicographic perspective, it presents grammatical, phonetic, and semantic information about words systematically and consistently. Returning to the assessments of the dictionary mentioned at the beginning, Hakas’s dictionary must be recognized as significant for the later lexicography of Lithuania Minor: 70% of the words in Pilypas Ruigys’s Lietuvių–vokiečių ir vokiečių–lietuvių žodyne (Königsberg, 1747) were taken from Hakas’s dictionary. Although Hakas’s grammar may be regarded as a summary of Klein’s grammars, it also contains innovations that reflect the features of the grammatical system more adequately. A large and rather complex publication has not escaped its “attendants”—editorial oversights and proofreading errors. For example, the exact date on which the dictionary was printed remains unclear: how could the king have thanked Francke for the dictionary sent to him on 31 March 1730 if Francke signed its preface den 17. Nov. 1730 (vol. II, p. 30)? The title of the newspaper Neue Zeitungen… is cited inconsistently (vol. II, pp. 27 and 28). Among the proofreading errors, we would point out: pp. 58, 59—adverbum; p. 60—a comma is needed between praep. and praepoff.; p. 97—Gramatica; pp. 102, 103—ablatyvas ir abliatyvas; p. 107— Recenzijos / Reviews 185 V I N C E N T A S D R O T V I N A S vacabula; cf. also p. 57, the abbreviations active, passive, elsewhere (p. 86) referred to as “Latin little words”; on p. 78, copuliren is considered a Latin word; cf. also p. 54 – having three endings; p. 107 – prusas and Prusija; p. 60 – conjunctions, p. 118 – conjunction; p. 101 – recommended; p. 318 – paradigms. Of course, these minor issues cannot detract from the scholarly value of the publication. The author of these review lines has previously had occasion to study the history of the Lithuanian Language Seminar in Halle, as well as Hako’s dictionary and grammar. To sum up, then, one can say that the publication’s spiritus movens, V. Zubaitienė, known as a researcher of the dictionaries of Lithuania Minor (cf. her monograph Pilypo Ruigio Littauisch-deutsches und deutsch-littauisches lexicon (1747): šaltiniai ir leksikografinis metodas. Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2010), with the assistance of specialists in early writings, has now presented Lithuanian culture with an edition of an important old text—a source from the heritage of bilingual lexicography in Lithuania Minor. This publication is an example of collaborative work in the service of the history of Lithuanian lexicography; to date, it offers perhaps the most comprehensive account of the contents and sources of Hako’s dictionary and grammar, and their significance for the later works of others. The study substantially expands our knowledge of the Lithuanian Language Seminar in Halle as a centre of Lithuanian studies in the first half of the eighteenth century. Received on 21 May 2014. V I N C E N T A S D R O T V I N A S Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences 31 Taraso Ševčenkos St., LT-03111 Vilnius, Lithuania [email protected] 186 A c t a L i n g u i s t i c a L i t h u a n i c a L X X