Deutsches Wörterbuch

The German dictionary ( DWB ) is the largest and most comprehensive dictionary of the German language since the 16th century with the meanings of words and citations. It is named because it was the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, who started in 1838 with the DWB also the Grimm. Only in 1961, after 123 years, it has been terminated. A total of 32 volumes arose. The revised edition has, however, begun simultaneously with the completion of the work. An additional source volume appeared in 1971.

Mission and history

The edition of the German dictionary ( DWB) was an ambitious project spoke scientific work of the philologist - brother pair Jacob ( 1785-1863 ) and Wilhelm Grimm ( 1786-1859 ). It should explain as evidence dictionary 'in-depth origin and use of each German word.

Using the DWB should tend to all members of the German Sprachgemeinsamkeit can make their language, which was also a national concern at a time when there were only many small German states and not a politically united Germany. The elderly, as then current German word usage should be documented on all style levels.

" The dictionary is not immoral book, but a scientific, just take all purposes. even in the bible it does not lacks in words, which are frowned upon by the fine company. picture of naked owls who takes a nuisance or to the exhausting nothing wachspraeparaten the anatomy, go in this sal misfälligen the words over and look at the vast majority of the others. "

Thus, the DWB was the first dictionary of history, in which swear words and indelicate words were taken.

The brothers had the daunting task that lay ahead of them underestimated; the work was originally estimated at six to seven volumes and up to 10 years of work. They took the job in 1838 in attack. More than 80 employees purchased more than 600,000 documents. The first volume appeared in 1854, but she could work in her lifetime only a small part: Wilhelm Grimm, who wrote the contributions to the letters D, died in 1859; Jacob, who was able to complete the letters A, B, C and E, died on 20 September 1863 the editing of the article "fruit".

The end of 2005 appeared hand copies - a total of nine volumes - the DWB ( including seven volumes of annotated copies of Jacob Grimm ) with marginal notes in the so-called Berlinka, a former part inventory of the Prussian State Library, to which today in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska ( the library of the Jagiellonian University ) is located. Which is listed in these volumes material amounts (based on the first delivery issue of ¹ DWB with 2805 entries from A to Allverein ) 330 References and keyword approaches, which prove to be about 130 as important and already part of the revision (² DWB, see below) are.

Subsequent generations of linguists, continued the work. Early 20th century, took over the Prussian Academy of Sciences of the development of the dictionary, in Göttingen a central collection point was established for systematizing the citations; 1930 a permanent job at the Berlin Academy was established. On 10 January 1961, the German professor Bernhard Beckmann issued in East Berlin the imprimatur for the edging tape, as he telegraphed his West German colleague Theodor Koch in Göttingen. 123 years after the beginning of the work appeared in January 1961 with the 380th delivery of the 32nd and final volume of this dictionary ( total volume: 67 744 text columns, about 320,000 keywords, total weight 84 kg ). The original edition is only a few hundred copies. The 33 band is a 1971 published source tape.

Reprints and pads

A reprint of the hardcover edition is in the "house -Verlag " by the Brothers Grimm, the S. Hirzel Verlag published. There also appeared between May 1, 1852, and 1971, the first edition of the complete works. It consists of 33 volumes with 34,824 pages.

1984 DWB first appeared in a paperback edition; a paperback edition in 33 volumes is available again at dtv since 1999.

1957 a revised edition of this massive dictionary, it was decided to bring the oldest part, the letters A -F, up to date. The plan was a German - German Cooperation: In East Berlin (DDR ) should the letters A -C, D- F are re-edited in Göttingen. The first delivery could appear as early as 1965, but this new edition is not yet finished. In Göttingen 2006, the work on DF have been completed. The Berlin proportion is more extensive compared to the Göttingen. In addition, the progress of the work in the GDR was an enormous obstacle for political reasons, because the DWB lexicography was viewed as a project of a " bourgeois "; so most of the staff have been used off and on for other tasks during the sixties. The remaining Berlin route was redistributed in 2006 between the two jobs. There are expected to be 11 deliveries to create the completion of work on the track A- F for the year 2016Vorlage: planned future / In 2 years. The deliveries of the new edition appear in S. Hirzel Verlag.

The Berlin- Brandenburg Academy of Sciences precludes the subsequent revision of the letter G to Z. The Berlin job concluded its work in 2012. The missing keywords starting with the letters B and C are re-edited in Göttingen in the present state of linguistics. Volumes with the letters A, D, E and F are already available. The reason of the decision to suspend the works unwillingness to finance is called, the science director of the Academy, Wolf -Hagen Krauth.

The Competence Centre for Electronic Processing and Publication in the Humanities at the University of Trier digitized under the direction of German studies Kurt Gärtner and funded by the DFG, the entire 300 million printed characters by the method of double entry: In China, the entire body has been manually entered twice, to reduce error caused by the redundancy; scanning was not possible due to the font size of only 7 points and 6 points for the quotes. A CD- ROM version of this digitization for the operating systems Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X was released in July 2004 from the publisher Zweitausendeins. In this version misspelling of the original have been corrected. An online edition, the University of Trier available. For 2014, Zweitausendeins has announced a new version that should run under current operating systems.