Friday, February 24, 2012

Teaching materials: Homework for research links

For my course on medieval and early modern German literature and culture that I taught last fall, I wanted to introduce students to the research tools that I use frequently. The most experienced of the students were completing a minor at most, while for many students, this would be the only German literature or culture course they would ever take, so I wanted the assignments to be useful but approachable for undergraduates.

I've left the assignments (available here as a single zip file) as MS Word documents rather than turning them into PDFs because I'll need to make sure that nothing has changed when I next teach the course - the VD16 interface has been updated since I wrote the assignment for it, for example, and I didn't yet have access to the Nachträge volume of the Verfasserlexikon when I wrote the VL assignment. The assignments cover the following resources:
  • Handschriftencensus.de
  • Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke and ISTC
  • VD16
  • Verfasserlexikon
  • Grimms Wörterbuch and the Wörterbuchnetz
  • MLA database, Regesta imperii, and WorldCat

Anyone who would like to use them is free to do so. For the last three assignments, I've also included answer keys. I'll probably have to revise the assignments a few more times before I'm completely happy with them.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Separated at birth

As I mentioned earlier, I am fairly confident that Nikolaus Weise and Nikolaus Wyse are the same person, although they have separate entries in the Personennamendatei of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (PND 119866811 and PND 119875667, respectively). Occasionally I'll come across other authors where the names, titles, and dates of publication suggest that a single author's name has been recorded in two different forms. This one, for example, looks like a duplicate entry in VD16:
  • Cöllen, Lukas von - PND 119643081. Author of VD16 ZV 3751, 3752. ZV 3751 is ALmanach vnde Practica vp dat Jar...M.D.LXXX, Bibliograph. Nachweis: BC 2213.
  • Köln, Lukas von - PND 119730855. Author of VD16 ZV 2550, 9095. ZV 9095 is ALmanach vnde Practica vp dat Jar...M.D.LXXX, Bibliograph. Nachweis: BC 2213.

It can also happen when an author's works show up in both VD16 and VD17. In this example, both Werner Hartmann and "Berner Hartmann" describe themselves as disciples of Leonhardt Thurneysser zum Thurn:

  • Hartmann, Werner - PND 119699729. Author of VD16 ZV 7384 (PROGNOSTICON Astrologicum, Auff das Jahr...M.D.XCVII). Erfurt: Jakob Singe, 1597
  • Hartmann, Berner - PND 121734994. Author of VD17 23:285570G (Deutsche Practica/ Auff das Jahr ... M.DC.X). Erfurt: Singe, [1609]

Friday, February 10, 2012

Even more Zengg

I've updated the list of "Dietrich von Zengg" editions by adding Ain Practice / Oder Weyssagung ains gelerten mans mit namen Jeremias von Pariß... ([Straßburg: Johann Knobloch d.Ä. um 1525], VD16 J 231) whose text at first glance is that of the "Zengg" rather than the "462" version, as noted by Heike Talkenberger (Sintflut, 468).

Also, Courtney Kneupper's dissertation has now appeared on Proquest, and it looks excellent. Hopefully she'll find a publisher soon for the revised version. The dissertation focuses on prophecy in the formation of German national identity among the laity during the late Middle Ages, with extensive consideration of "Gamaleon," "Bruder Sigwalt," and "Auffahrt Abend." She also mentions an upcoming project on "Dietrich von Zengg," which I'd very much like to see. The bibliographic appendices on prophecies circulating in late medieval Germany look to be especially useful.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Flacius reads Zengg

Update 3 May 2013: The mystery I refer to below has now been solved.

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Matthias Flacius included "Dietrich von Zengg" as one of his witnesses to truth in his 1556 Catalogus testium veritatis (VD16 F 1293, p. 937):
Theodericus primum minorita, postea episcopus Croatiae, vixit anno 1410. In fine suae prophetiae, una cum aliis Rhythmicis prophetiis impressae, praedixit fore, ut Romana sedes, quae simonia et libidinibus esset contanimatissima, corruat...
It's clear that Flacius was reading the same prophecy that we know, where one finds at the end (VD16 T 736, a4r):
Auch so hat wol geredt die Kriechisch zung vonn der blindtheyt der Simoney / vnd vonn der vnkeüsch der Römischen priester / darvon der Römisch stůl wirdt fallen...
But there are a few mysteries. Flacius says that Theodericus/Dietrich lived in 1410, and refers to an edition of Zengg printed with other prophecies in verse. The printed editions consistently date Zengg to 1420, however, and none of them appear at first glance to combine Zengg with verse prophecies. Was Flacius reading an edition of Zengg that's now lost?

No. He was referring to Melchior Amberbach's 1548 Vom Ende der Welt (VD16 A 2161).

I don't think so. I suspect that Flacius is instead inexactly describing - or misremembering? - the most recent edition, printed in 1546 by Hans Guldenmund in Nuremberg (VD16 C 953), the only  an edition that combines Zengg with another text. In this case the other prophecy is the "Hidden Prophecy" of Johann Carion and the interpretation of the same that had begun circulating that same year (or a decade after Carion's death). Guldenmund's edition of 1546 repeats the title formulation of Hieronymus Andreae's edition of 1536 (VD16 T 737), so the dating of Zengg to 116 years earlier by Andreae keeps Zengg in 1420, while Guldenmund's title page moves Zengg to 1430 by failing to update the title formula. Flacius moves in the opposite direction, placing Zengg ten years earlier.

Guldenmund's edition of Carion and Zengg is also not entirely lacking in verse. Carion's "Hidden Prophecy" is prose, but the "Interpretation of the Hidden Prophecy" inserts sixteen lines of verse before the "Hidden Prophecy" ("Es ist am tag / man hats erfaren // Das groß trübsal vor tausent jaren"), and includes two short extracts of Latin verse in the interpretive section. I wouldn't have immediately thought of the "Interpretation of the Hidden Prophecy" as verse prophecies, but Flacius may have remembered it that way.

"Dietrich von Zengg" is also excerpted by Wolfgang Lazius in his Fragmentum vaticinii of 1547 (VD16 ZV 9507), which contains many prophecies in verse, but the excerpt doesn't include the section summarized by Flacius, and doesn't identify the author by name or by nation. I suspect the mysterious reference in Flacius is not to Lazius or to a lost edition of Zengg, but to an imperfectly remembered edition of 1546.

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I have a number of presentations coming up soon, so posting may be light in February.