Germanic philology

Proto-Germanic

The unattested ancestor language lying behind the various Germanic languages is Proto-Germanic. The eldest of the attested Germanic languages is Gothic, which preserves many of the archaic features of Proto-Germanic that the other attested languages have lost.

Germanic philology or Germanic studies is the philological study of the Germanic languages, particularly from a comparative or historical perspective.

History

16th-17th Centuries:

The beginnings of research into the Germanic languages began in the 16th century, with the discovery of literary texts in the earlier phases of the languages. Early modern publications dealing with Old Norse culture appeared in the 16th century, e.g. Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (Olaus Magnus, 1555) and the editio princeps of the 13th century Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus, in 1514.

In 1603, Melchior Goldast made the first edition of Middle High German poetry, Tyrol and Winsbeck, including a commentary which focused on linguistic problems and set the tone for the approach to such works in the subsequent centuries.

He later gave similar attention to the Old High German translation of the Benedictine Rule. In Elizabethan era and Jacobean England, Robert Cotton's collection and studies of the manuscripts now in the Cotton Library marks the beginnings of scholarship of the Old English language and Anglo-Saxon literature.

The pace of publications started by the Gutenberg Revolution increased during the 17th century with Latin translations of the Edda (notably Peder Resen's Edda Islandorum of 1665).

19th and 20th Centuries:

Germanic philology, together with linguistics as a whole, emerged as a formal academic discipline in the early 19th century, pioneered particularly in Germany by linguists such as Jacob Grimm, the German author, philologist, and folklorist who discovered the Grimm's law, documenting the sound shift across all Germanic languages. Important 19th-century scholars include Henry Sweet, Matthias Lexer, and Joseph Wright. One of the most famous and respected 20th-century scholars, whose work as a Germanic philologist heavily influenced his poetry, fiction, and high fantasy writing, was Oxford University professor J.R.R. Tolkien.

Germanic-Speaking Peoples

Germanic Philology has traditionally been interested not only in the study of the Germanic languages, but also of Germanic culture, the culture of those who spoke the Germanic languages. In the early-twentieth century, Raymond Wilson Chambers commented the following on the identity of the Germanic peoples:

"But what do we mean by “nation”? Doubtless from the point of view of politics and war, each Germanic tribe, or offshoot of a tribe, formed an independent nation: the Longobardi had no hesitation in helping the “Romans” to cut the throats of their Gothic kinsmen: Penda the Mercian was willing to ally with the Welshmen in order to overthrow his fellow Angles of Northumbria. But all this, as the history of the ancient Greeks or of the ancient Hebrews might show us, is quite compatible with a consciousness of racial unity among the warring states, with a common poetic tradition and a common literature. For the purposes of poetry there was only one nation—the Germanic—split into many dialects and groups, but possessed of a common metre, a common style, a common standard of heroic feeling: and any deed of valour performed by any Germanic chief might become a fit subject for the poetry of any Germanic tribe of the heroic age. So, if by “nation” we mean the whole Germanic race, then Germanic poetry was essentially “national”. The Huns were the only non-Germanic tribe who were received (for poetic purposes) into Germania. Hunnish chiefs seem to have adopted Gothic manners, and after the Huns had disappeared it often came to be forgotten that they were not Germans. But with this exception the tribes and heroes of Germanic heroic poetry are Germanic ... If, however, by “nation” we understand the different warring units into which the Germanic race was, politically speaking, divided, then Germanic poetry is essentially “international"".