Slovene Lands is a geographical term that describes the territories in Central and South-East Europe inhabited by the Slovenes since the sixth century AD. The Slovene Lands included Carniola, the southern part of Styria, the southern part of Carinthia, Istria, Gorizia and Gradisca, Trieste, Istria and Prekmurje.

Each Slovene land was a feudal unit. Carniola, Styria and Carinthia were duchies, Gorizia a county, Istria a margravate and Trieste a town. All the Slovene lands were ruled by the Habsburgs except those on the western and eastern borders which were controlled by Venice and Hungary respectively.

The historic maps presented in this blog are from the Topographical Collection of King George III.

A 1697 French map of the Duchies of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola as the hereditary lands of the Habsburg Crown in which were included the Counties of Celje and of Gorica, and Windic March. A copperplate engraving, hand colour in outline. Maps K.Top.90.53. (Image from the British Library's Flickr account)

Carniola (in Slovene Kranjska) where about the half of Slovenes lived was ruled by German ecclesiastical and lay princely houses in succession until 1335 when it became a Habsburg province. Raised to the status of Duchy in 1364 as a Hereditary Land of the Habsburg monarchy it became integral part of the Austrian Empire in 1804, and from 1867 a constituent part of Austria-Hungary until 1918. The capital of Carniola was Ljubljana which is the capital of Slovenia today.

A 1686 Italian map of the Duchies of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola and the other hereditary entities that made up part of the Austrian Circle. A copperplate engraving. Maps K.Top.90.54. (Image from the British Library's Flickr account)

Styria (Štajerska) and Carinthia (Koroška) became Habsburg Crown lands in 1282 and 1355 respectively. Most inhabitants of the two duchies were ethnic Germans but there was a strong Slovene minority. After the First World War, part of southern Styria including Maribor, Ptuj, Velenje and Celje, and a small part of southern Carinthia, were ceded to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

A map produced in Amsterdam between 1696 and 1708 showing part of the Austrian Circle comprising the Duchies of Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and other hereditary states of the Habsburg Crown. A copperplate engraving, hand colour in outline. Maps K.Top.90.56. (Image from the British Library's Flickr account)

A 1709 French map showing part of the Austrian domain comprising the Duchies of Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and other hereditary states of the Habsburg Crown. A copperplate engraving, hand colour in outline. Maps K.Top.90.57. (Image from the British Library's Flickr account)

A German map produced around 1720 showing the Duchy of Carniola, Windic March and Istria. A copperplate engraving, hand colour in outline. Inset at upper right shows a view of Ljubljana, the capital of the Duchy of Carniola. Inset at lower right is Cerknica Lake (In Slovene Cerkniško jezero) Maps K.Top.90.72. (Image from the British Library's Flickr account)

A map produced in Amsterdam between 1726 and 1750 showing the Duchies of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola with the County of Celje which comprised the Austrian Circle. Inset at lower left features the coats of arms of the four areas. A copperplate engraving, hand colour in outline. (Image from the British Library's Flickr account) Maps K.Top.90.55.

Map of the Slovenian Lands and Regions, produced and published in Vienna in 1864 by Peter Kozler (1824-1879) a jurist, geographer and politician. A copperplate engraving, hand colour in outline. Maps 27730.(7.)

Kozler also compiled the Directory of cities, towns and places in Slovene and German as an appendix to the map of Slovenia (1864). The first 1852 edition of the map is available from the Slovenian Digital Library.
 

Milan Grba, Lead Curator South-East European Collections

Novela famosa, y exemplar, no hay contra el amor venganza. Recopilada por Isidro de Robles … En la qual se refieren los tragicos sucessos de un caballlero ingles, llamado Eduardo, por los amores de una dama inglesa, llamada Isabela, muger de el almirante de Inglaterra, y de el dichoso fin, que tuvieron sus trabajosos quebrantos, como vera el curioso lector (Sevilla: en la imprenta Castellana, y Latina de Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla, [1720?])

[Famous and exemplary novel, there is no revenge against love. Collected by Isidro de Robles … In which are told the tragic experiences of an English gentleman named Edward for love of an English lady named Isabella, wife of the Admiral of England, and of the happy end to their sufferings, as the curious reader will see.]

Title page of Novela famosa, y exemplar, no hay contra el amor venganza (Sevilla, [1720]) RB.23.a.40411

The plot: In England, the good English knight Eduardo is imprisoned for injuring the Scottish Ambassador in a joust. In prison, he falls in love with a picture of Isabella. The Admiral of England replaces Eduardo in a joust and King Ricardo (The Lionheart) rewards him with Isabella’s hand. Eduardo spies on Isabella. Her Spanish maid Rosaura sings a song in Spanish which Eduardo had written. Isabella knows Eduardo by reputation. The Admiral comes home unexpectedly and Eduardo kills him. He flees to the court of Alfonso VIII in Toledo. Eduardo rescues Alfonso when he is ambushed by Baron Belflor. Isabella wants revenge on her husband’s murderer. Dagger in hand, she finds Eduardo asleep and ‘like Psyche’, falls in love with his beauty. Love overcomes revenge. She imprisons him to protect him from execution. King Richard visits Alfonso to plan a crusade. Eduardo reminds Richard he saved his life and asks him to make Isabella pardon him. Isabella says she wants revenge, but asks the Princess to ask the King for a pardon. The King tells Isabella to pardon Eduardo and marry him.

Not an entirely accurate picture of medieval England: hunting can only take place early in the morning because of ‘the rigour of the Sun’; they arm themselves with pistols.

As you might imagine, the importance of this text is bibliographical rather than literary.

This blog celebrates the acquisition of a small book. By small book I mean a chapbook, made by folding one or two sheets twice to make a pamphlet. These were news reports (relaciones), ballads, plays (including monologues excerpted from plays, called ‘relaciones de comedia’: see Gabriel Andrés) and novels, plus works of popular religion. By novel I mean what Dr Johnson meant: ‘a small tale, generally of love’. Among famous readers of Spanish chapbooks were Samuel Pepys and Queen Christina of Sweden.

The subjects of ballads, plays and novels often overlapped (we might note the sympathetic servants in our novel), and so did their form of publication. There was a ban on printing plays and novels (from 1625 to 1634), which the publishers tried to circumvent by passing their sometimes sensational stories off as exemplary history. (Our book is ‘exemplar’ and ‘tragico’.) People were still reading these 17th-century texts in the 18th century.

Ballads, plays and novels could be published in collections (single- or multi-authored) or as chapbooks (pliegos sueltos [‘independent quires’] or when appropriate, [comedias] sueltas [‘independent plays’])).

Separately printed ballads and plays are much more common than separately printed novels, which I think it’s safe to say are rare: hence the interest of this item. Today’s book is a novel, but it has a woodcut and layout in two columns which make it resemble a ballad. And its title could be a play.

It’s difficult to know who the author is. Ripoll (pp. 54-57) confuses our No hay contra el amor venganza with El amor en la venganza by the fertile Alonso de Castillo Solórzano (1584-c.1648). Our text was first published in the collection Varios efectos de amor en onze novelas exemplares … recogidas por Isidro de Robles (1666; with reprints up to 1760) (Ripoll, pp. 165-66). So Robles is just the compiler. This suelta appears to be the only separate printing of No hay contra el amor venganza.

Alonso de Alcalá y Herrera wrote five lipogrammatic stories which were included in Varios efectos de amor of 1666: this explains why someone has written his name in pencil at the head of the title page.

The printer, Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla printed large books and small books. Indeed, he printed in Latin as well as Spanish. It’s tempting to suppose that the small books, quick and easy to print and sold at low prices but in large numbers, subsidised the bigger books (Griffin). Small books are rarely dated, but big books are (indeed, it was a legal requirement) and approximate dates for one can be deduced from the other.

Hermosilla printed a good number of comedias sueltas, all undated (Whitehead, STC, III, 51; Escudero, pp. 616-17). Novelas sueltas from his press are rare, but two are known, to which ours should now be added. The Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, has a novela suelta:

Alcalá y Herrera, Alonso de ?

Novela famosa, y exemplar, la Peregrina Hermitaña, escrita sin la letra O, recopilada por Isidro de Robles. (Seville, [s.a.]) 32 p.; 4º. CCPB000038807-6

To which (Ripoll, p. 166) adds Novela famosa y burlesca; Los tres maridos burlados … (Seville, [s.a.])

Hermosilla indeed advertises on the last page that he specialises in small books:

En la imprenta castellana, y latina, de Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla, Mercader de libros en Calle de Genova, donde se hallarán otras muchas Relaciones, Romances, Entremeses, y comedias, corregidas fielmente por sus legitimos Originales.

[In the Spanish and Latin press of Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla, bookseller in the Calle de Génova, where many other newsbooks [or monologues], ballads, interludes and plays may be found, faithfully corrected against their genuine originals]

Harold Whitehead records just one dated book printed by Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla: El león prodigioso of 1732 (item G162; shelfmark 1456.f.7); significantly this is a book and not a chapbook. Whitehead ascribes a date of [c. 1720] to many of Hermosilla’s comedias sueltas, and I follow his lead.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections

References/further reading:

Gabriel Andrés, ‘Relaciones de comedia en Cerdeña: los pliegos del taller sevillano de los Hermosilla (1684-1730) en la Biblioteca Universitaria de Cagliari’, Janus, 2 (2013), 48-73. Available at Researchgate.net

Francisco Escudero y Perosso, Tipografía hispalense (Madrid, 1894). 11906.c.1.

Clive Griffin, ‘Literary Consequences of the Peripheral Nature of Spanish Printing in the Sixteenth Century’, in Literary cultures and the material book, edited by Simon Eliot, Andrew Nash and Ian Willison (London, 2007), pp. 207-14. YC.2008.a.8654

Begoña Ripoll, La novela barroca: catálogo bio-bibliográfico (1620-1700) (Salamanca, 1991). YA.2003.a.1512

Barry Taylor, ‘Exemplarity in and around the Novelas ejemplares’, Modern Language Review, 110 (2015), 456-72. P.P.4970.ca.

H. G. Whitehead, Eighteenth-century Spanish chapbooks in the British Library: a descriptive catalogue (London, 1997). YC.1997.a.2900

H. G. Whitehead, Short-title catalogue of eighteenth-century Spanish books in the British Library (London, 1994) 2725.e.2791

This week the German Embassy in London together with the German Academic Exchange Service and the Goethe Institut UK are running a ‘Shout out for German’  campaign, encouraging students, teachers and fans of German to show their love for the language and their experiences learning and using it. As a small contribution I decided to look at some of the many books in the BL that have been helping people to learn this splendid language over the centuries.

Title page of The High Dutch Minerva a-la-mode; or, a Perfect Grammar never extant before, whereby the. English may both easily and exactly learne the neatest dialect of the German mother-language used throughout all Europe (London, 1680)

The first true German textbook for English speakers was published anonymously in 1680 under the title The High-Dutch Minerva (‘High-Dutch’ was a common term for German at the time). The author, Martin Aedler, was clearly a big fan of his native German, describing it as the “most copious and significant, majestick and sweet, perfect and pure, easie and usefull, antient and universal toung.” Unfortunately potential learners seem not to have shared his enthusiasm and the publication of the book effectively bankrupted him. Nonetheless, the work was reissued in 1685 and its failure did not deter Heinrich Offelen from publishing his Double Grammar for Germans to learn English and English-Men to learn the German-Tongue in 1687.

Title page of A Double Grammar for Germans to learn English and English-Men to learn the German-Tongue ... (London, 1687) 628.b.12

However, it was not until the later 18th century that English speakers really started to take an interest in learning and reading German, leading to the publication of more grammars and dictionaries. John Uttiv, writing in the preface to his Complete Practical German Grammar in 1796, was clearly not impressed with these, claiming that his predecessors’ work was “for the most part incomplete, occasionally incorrect and scarcely in any way sufficiently practical to expediate and facilitate the acquisition of the language”. Users of the grammars could also be critical: in our copy of Johann Martin Minner’s English and German Dialogues, published in 1813, a reader has corrected some of the English translations provided.

Annotated page of Johann Martin Minner, English and German Dialogues Adapted to the Style of Polite and Elegant Conversation for Social Life =
Englisch-Deutsche Gespräche für das gesellschaftliche Leben (Frankfurt am Main, 1813) RB.23.a.39241

The 19th century saw a massive growth in interest in German and in publication of teaching and learning aids. The language started to find its way into school and university curricula and dedicated textbooks inevitably followed, as did annotated or bilingual editions of texts that enabled learners to experience German literature as they studied. Some of these used interlinear translations, the so-called ‘Hamiltonian system’, which had the potential to cause confusion given the differences of English and German word order, as in the opening of Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell pictured below.

Page from L. Braunfels, A. C. White, Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell. The German Text, with an Interlinear Translation, Grammatical and Historical Notes, and an Introduction Containing the Elements of German Grammar, Second edition (London, 1859) 11746.c.40. Available online

Until the mid-20th century most German school textbooks had very straightforward titles along the lines of A Modern German Course, but in recent decades things have become a bit more upbeat and scattered with exclamation marks. Our catalogue lists cheery titles such as Alle Einsteigen! (‘All Aboard!’), Stimmt! (‘Right!’), Deutsch: Na Klar! (‘German: Sure!’) and the reassuring German with a Smile. These more modern works also focus less on the theory of grammar and more on the spoken language, often enhanced by audio or online exercises.

A selection of German textbooks from the 1960s to the 2010s

Changes in the way the language is introduced is illustrated by two books aimed at younger learners, Little German Folk from 1904 and Bringing German to Life from 2015. Both begin by introducing a German family, but in very different ways. Little German Folk presents a picture of traditional nuclear family (oddly dressed in quasi-renaissance clothing) and describes them in the third person. In Bringing German to Life two children, Anna and Alex, illustrated in a more cartoonish style, introduce themselves and their family in a dialogue, and we learn that they live with their mother and grandfather (and Max the dog). Anna and Alex accompany the learner throughout the book, but the family in Little German Folk more or less disappear after the first page. Bringing German to Life also has ideas for craft projects and activities to make learning more appealing.

Above: Meet the family from Margareta Schramm, Little German Folk: a First Book for Little Children Written in the Everyday Speech of Little German Children (Shaldon, 1904) 012808.m.50. Below: Meet the family from  Catherine Watts, Hilary Phillips, Bringing German to Life: Creative Activities for 5-11 (London, 2015) YKL.2015.b.932.

The British Library’s collections also illustrate how German has been – and remains – an important language for many professions and academic disciplines. We have specialised textbooks for builders, businesspeople, musicians, singers, and art historians among others – not to mention librarians!

A selection of German textbooks and readers for specific professions

There are also books from both world wars intended to help British and American soldiers to understand German in general and military terminology in particular. After the Second World War, US diplomats could turn to the German Basic Course created by the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute in the 1960s, part of which was donated to the Library in 2017.

Page from F.W. Zimmermann, An Easy Handbook of German for Soldiers, containing the chief grammatical rules, conversational phrases, essays on military and technical subjects, and a handy vocabulary (London, 1914) 12963.aaa.48.

All in all, the British Library has pretty much everything you could want to help you learn German, or to study how German has been learned over the past three and a half centuries. And once you’ve learned your German, our German-language collections on pretty much all topics under the sun are yours to explore. You can’t shout out in our reading rooms of course, but I hope I’ve inspired you to join me in shouting out for German this week!

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

References/Further reading:

John Uttiv, A complete practical German grammar, according to the best German grammarians, containing true, plain, and easy instructions for acquiring fondamentally [sic.] and expeditiously a clear knowledge of the language, both in speaking and writing (Göttingen, 1796) RB.23.a.39233.

Günter Wallnig, Harry Evered, Deutsch für Baufachleute = German for Building Specialists (Wiesbaden, 1979) X.622/11769

Doris Fulda Merrifield, Deutsche Wirtschaftssprache für Amerikaner (New York, 1989) YC.1990.b.1966

Josephine Barber, German for Musicians (London, 1985) X.439/13542

William Odom, German for Singers: a Textbook of Diction and Phonetics (New York, 1981) X.950/9336

Mary L. Apelt, Hans-Peter Apelt, Reading Knowledge in German: a Course for Art Historians and Archaeologists = ein englisch-deutscher Lesekurs für Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie (Berlin, 1984) 84/20490

George W. Turner, Axel J. A. Vieregg, J. W. Blackwood, German for Librarians (Palmerston North, 1972) 2719.x.14068

Erich Funke, Meno Spann, Fred Fehling, Kriegsdeutsch: Easy Texts in Military German for Speaking and Reading (London, 1943) 8339.aa.7.

Samuel A. Brown, William R. van Buskirk, German Basic Course, Units 13-24 (Guilford CT, 1965). YD.2019b.360

Nicola McLelland, German Through English Eyes: a History of Language Teaching and Learning in Britain, 1500-2000 (Wiesbaden, 2015) YD.2015.a.2313