MYTHS IN THE HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS
THE CASE OF THE GOALS OF GEORG WENKER’S DIALECTOLOGY
E. F. K. KOERNER
University of Ottawa
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study
in the Humanities and Social Sciences
ABSTRACT
In a recent paper, Clemens Knobloch has listed six myths alone which surround the
special course (Sonderweg) which German linguistics is supposed to have taken during
the Nazi era, such as the isolation of the field from international developments, the nonreception of Saussure, the politicization of the discipline and the worthlessness of the
work done by scholars during 1933–1945 (Knobloch 2001). As it is only in recent years
that historians have taken a serious interest in studying linguistic scholarship during the
Third Reich (e.g., Hutton 1999). It may simply have been the case that people had felt uncomfortable with the subject of a close examination of this period, because their immediate teachers might be implicated in having supported Nazi ideology in their early careers,
or because they simply accepted the white-washing that took place after 1945. Be it as it
may, it is time that these incorrect perceptions of linguistics during these twelve horrific
years in German history are exploded.
While I have taken an interest in this period and in the place of ideology in 19th and
20th century historical-comparative linguistics (e.g., Koerner 2000), and plan to continue
research in this area in years to come, I have chosen a seemingly innocuous example of
the creation and maintenance of a myth which has been repeated in most, if not all the
textbook histories in which the subject of the development of dialect study and the early
opposition to the neogrammarian framework is treated. The subject I shall talk about is
the widely accepted claim that Georg Wenker (1852–1911), in devising his research on
the Low German dialect of the Rhineland area in 1876, had set out to disprove the neogrammarian tenet of the exceptionlessness of sound laws (and also that he had maintained
the view that present-day dialect isoglosses reflect historical borders of Germanic tribes).
It will be shown that this claim is a myth, and that had its origin in statements made by
Wenker’s early collaborator and successor at the University of Marburg, Ferdinand
Wrede (1863–1934), in various places from 1903 onwards. By analyzing the genesis of
and the motivation for such a ‘creation’, we may agree with Jakobson’s adage that what is
widely accepted as a fact is probably not true.
REFERENCES
Hutton, Christopher M. 1999. Linguistics and the Third Reich: Mother-tongue fascism, race and
the science of language. London & New York: Routledge.
Knobloch, Clemens. 2001. “Die Sprachwissenschaft geht ‘aufs Ganze’: Sprachwissenschaft im
NS”. Deutsche Geisteswissenschaften im Nationalsozialismus ed. by Franz-Rutger Hausmann.
Munich: Historisches Kolleg.
Koerner, E. F. K. 2000. “Ideology in 19th and 20th Century Study of Language: A neglected
aspect of linguistic historiography”. Indogermanische Forschungen 105.1-26.