Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Cordes, Albrecht

Titel

Die Sprache der Statuten des lübischen Rechts (ca. 1224–1642)

Ist Teil von

• Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 2021, Vol.150 (1), p.84-102

Ort / Verlag

Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Quelle

Biblioscout - Franz Steiner Verlag Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The workshop sets out to examine the contribution of merchants and their language to “The making of commercial law”. We wanted to understand the influence of travelling merchants and changes of language, assuming that both factors have produced fertile soil for new concepts of commercial law. This paper intends to focus on the latter, the language changes, and chooses the written language of the Lübeck law as case study. Its oldest sources are in Latin, which is replaced by Low German in a slow process between 1250 and 1400, but the language of the central law books changes very suddenly between 1263 and 1267. In the 16th century High German established itself, and when the jurists of the 17th century wrote about the Ius lubecense Latin was in use again. Two questions shall be examined: Why did these language changes occur, and more importantly, how did the law change when expressed in the environment of a new language? All translation changes the content of the translated text to a certain degree, and this is especially true for translations of legal writings. The paper will study changes in the meaning of words and ask if certain languages were better adapted than others for expressing the complicated issues of commercial law. A few significant examples from the sources shall be scrutinized closely. Did the legal concepts and institutes, e. g. the technical terms of new contract types, travel together with the words denominating them? Which groups of legal texts were quick to change, which other ones were reluctant? The larger context of the text production is equally important. Who was able to master the old and the new language? Can we witness processes of professionalization? How did the horizon change once the new language was used? Who and where were the people one could now (no longer) communicate with?