Low German literature from 1650 to 1800.

(Prof. Dr Doreen Brandt)

From the 16th to the 17th century, a fundamental process of linguistic change took place in northern Germany. After Low German (ndt.) writing had emancipated itself from Latin (lat.) in the second half of the 14th century, a second change of written language in the history of the Low German language was heralded at the beginning of the 16th century with the adoption of High German (Hdt.). This was completed in the middle of the 17th century (Sodmann 2000). It was not until the 19th century that the so-called 'reliterarisation' of the Ndt. language (Langhanke 2015). To put it bluntly, it can therefore be said that the German language became scriptless. Language in the period from around 1650 to 1800. This raises two questions - on the one hand, how literature in a language that was about to lose or had already lost its written-language status was actually organised, and on the other hand, what literary production with Low German ultimately made possible in view of the change in written language. The "Niederdeutsche Bibliographie" by Conrad Borchling and Bruno Claußen (1931-1936, 1956) lists as many as 1619 printed works for this phase without written language. Most of these are literary texts in the narrower sense, including more than 800 wedding poems. This indicates that when the German language was made literary. language was made literarily productive, this was most likely to happen with the wedding poem. If we want to close the research gap that exists between Middle German literature up to the 17th cent. literature up to the 17th century and the ninth century. literature from the 19th century onwards, and to gain insights into Germanic literature after the change of written language. If we want to gain insights into the Germanic literature after the change of written language, then the path to this goal leads via the genre of wedding poems. The project sees itself as a research contribution to questions and phenomena of literary multilingualism and is therefore located at the intersection of literary studies and linguistics.

With the objectives outlined above, the project is the prelude to a comprehensive exploration of German literature. "Literature in Times of Writelessness", as part of which further holdings are to be digitally catalogued and secured, examined by literary scholars and edited in selection for the interested public as well as for the research community - including Caspar Abel's allegorical verse narrative "Hülflose Sassine" (1738) and Kaspar Friedrich Renner's animal epic "Hennynk de Han" (1732). At the same time, the project is intended as an exemplary study of literatures that, after flourishing in the Middle Ages, continued to exist in the early modern period under similar linguistic-historical conditions in order to achieve new prominence in the context of nation-building in the 19th century (e.g. Czech and Occitan literature).

Inventory documentation ndt. Prints 1650 to 1800:

Brandt, Doreen/Wolters, Kea-Marie/von Lienen, Joschka: LiZS_Ndt. Lit. 1650 bis 1800. Bestandsaufnahme der Drucke.xlsx, inventory of prints according to the "Niederdeutsche Bibliographie" (Borchling/Claußen), https://doi.org/10.57782/2LKHYX/BF85VQ, DARE, V1. 2025.

Research bibliography on Low German literature. Literature in the 17th and 18th century:

Brandt, Doreen/Becker, Thees: Forschungsbibliografie, https://doi.org/10.57782/6Q4PL1, DARE, V1. 2025

Further reading:

Doreen Brandt: Low German nowhere? New perspectives on Low German literature from 1650 to 1800. In: 100 Years of Low German Philology. Starting points, lines of development, challenges. Partial vol. 2: Current fields of research. Edited by Andreas Bieberstedt, Doreen Brandt, Klaas-Hinrich Ehlers, Christoph Schmitt. Berlin et al. 2024 (Regional language and regional culture 7), pp. 503-534.