German Dictionary by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

--- Dieses Projekt wurde 2016 beendet ---

The Most Extensive Dictionary of the German Language

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began working on the German dictionary in 1838, after being dismissed as professors at the University of Göttingen for protesting against constitutional changes in the Kingdom of Hanover.

The German Dictionary by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm is the most extensive lexicographical depiction of the German language. It describes the vocabulary used in written New High German from the middle of the 15th century until today. 

Its name stems from the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, who had devised the dictionary and begun working on it in the late thirties of the 19th century. After the death of the Grimms, renowned Germanists such as Rudolf Hildebrand, Moriz Heyne and Matthias von Lexer continued their work. In 1908, the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin took over the project. Since 1946, the endeavor has been jointly overseen by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities and by the Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic, which was superseded by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities following reunification.

It was apparent even before the completion of the first edition in 1960, which encompassed 32 volumes, that the Grimm Dictionary did not meet modern standards. In order to bring it up to date, the Academies in Berlin and Göttingen have completely reworked the most outdated letter sections A-F (in nine volumes). Completed in 2016, the dictionary is aimed at everyone who wants to learn about the usage and historical development of German words.

 

Göttingen Office

The Göttingen office of the German Dictionary was located at Geiststr. 10. The former clinic building, which later served as a student residence, was completely renovated by the University of Göttingen in 2014/15. It now houses several research projects of the Academy, including those working on dictionaries (see the film clip about the projects in Geiststraße). The German Dictionary had access not only to technical equipment tailored to its specific needs, but also to a variety of in-house resources:

  • A second copy of the Tübingen Luther Archive, containing over 3 million citations from D. Martin Luther’s Works. Critical Complete Edition, Section: Writings.
  • The citation collection for the letters B–C from the Early New High German Dictionary.
  • The in-house library with essential book collections, including own acquisitions and long-term loans from the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB).
  • Microfilmed historical sources for original-text verification and research, and a card index for lexical research with notes and scholarly literature on individual words.
     

Project Staff (December 2016):

Project Lead: PD Dr Volker Harm

Secretariat: Christiane Ritter
Research Staff: Dr Andrea Bambek / Wiebke Blanck MA / Dr Christiane Gante / Dr Nathalie Mederake / Kerstin Meyer-Hinrichs MA / Hans-Joachim Particke MA / Dr Ulrike Stöwer / Frank Michael Wohlers MA
Student Assistants: Malte deVries / Patrick Fam / Björn Höller / Clemens Schwarz / Anna-Lina Sperling / Anna Suelmann / Stephan Winnat / Polina Yakovleva
 

User Guide

Throughout its entire compilation, the German Dictionary by the Brothers Grimm has drawn considerable attention. The scope and complexity of this evolving work have challenged admirers and critics alike. The revised edition strives to remain within the conventions of the original while also ensuring the dictionary’s continuing scientific and lexicographic relevance. This guide is intended to offer interested users an introduction to the long-standing German Dictionary project. Following an outline of key developments, as well as the foundations and aims of the revision and its source material, the guide provides information on the structure and editing of dictionary entries. For those wishing to explore further, a selected bibliography is included. To assist readers in navigating potentially unfamiliar terms, a glossary is provided at the end. An example entry offers an overview of the article structure in the revised ²DWB.

Publications of the Göttingen Office

Publication Overview:

Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm. Neubearbeitung [German Dictionary by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm. New Edition]. Published by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. 


Published Volumes (German Titles):

2018        5. Band, 7. Lieferung BÜFFELKUH – CYBERSPACE.

Bearbeitet in der Arbeitsstelle Göttingen von A. Bambek, W. Blanck, C. Gante, V. Harm (Leitung), Y. Luther, N. Mederake, K. Meyer-Hinrichs, H.-J. Particke, U. Stöwer. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag 2018. ISBN: 978-3-7776-2751-9.

2017        5. Band, 6. Lieferung BRIEF – BÜFFELKUH.

Bearbeitet in der Arbeitsstelle Göttingen von A. Bambek, W. Blanck, N. Exo, C. Gante, V. Harm (Leitung), A. Hartmann, Y. Luther, N. Mederake, K. Meyer-Hinrichs, U. Stöwer, F.-M. Wohlers. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag 2017. ISBN: 978-3-7776-2720-5.

2016        5. Band, 5. Lieferung 2BOTTICH – BRIEF.

Bearbeitet in der Arbeitsstelle Göttingen von A. Bambek, W. Blanck, C. Gante, V. Harm (Leitung), Y. Luther,
N. Mederake, K. Meyer-Hinrichs, C. Redzich. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag 2016. ISBN: 978-3-7776-2660-4.

2015        5. Band, 4. Lieferung BLUES – 2BOTTICH.

Bearbeitet in der Arbeitsstelle Göttingen von A. Bambek, W. Blanck, N. Exo, C. Gante, V. Harm (Leitung), A. Hartmann, N. Mederake, K. Meyer-Hinrichs, H.-J. Particke, C. Redzich, D. Schmidt-Brücken, U. Stöwer. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag 2015. ISBN: 978-3-7776-2571-3.

2014        5. Band, 3. Lieferung BITTERKEIT – BLUES.

Bearbeitet in der Arbeitsstelle Göttingen von W. Blanck, J. Dippel, S. Elsner-Petri, C. Gante, T. Habel, V. Harm (Leitung), A. Hartmann, N. Mederake, C. Redzich, D. Schmidt-Brücken, U. Stöwer. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag 2014. ISBN: 978-3-7776-2504-1.

2013        5. Band, 2. Lieferung BEZICHTIGUNG – BITTERKEIT.

Bearbeitet in der Arbeitsstelle Göttingen von W. Blanck, S. Elsner-Petri, C. Gante, V. Harm, A. Katzmann, N. Mederake, A. Osterhus, D. Schmidt-Brücken, M. Schulz, U. Stöwer. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag 2013. ISBN: 978-3-7776-2374-0.

2012        5. Band, 1. Lieferung BETRIEB – BEZICHTIGUNG.

Bearbeitet in der Arbeitsstelle Göttingen von J. Dippel, S. Elsner-Petri, N. Exo, V. Harm, A. Katzmann, F. Michaelis, N. Mederake, A. Osterhus, D. Schmidt-Brücken, M. Schulz. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag 2012. ISBN: 978-3-7776-2301-6.
 

Activity Reports (in German, PDF Downloads):

 

Digital Materials Related to the German Dictionary

Several projects developed at the Göttingen office emerged from the ongoing work on the German Dictionary. To make the results accessible to a broader audience, they are now available in digital form.


Literature on Word Research (Literatur zur Wortforschung):

The Online Database for Literature on Word Research allows users to search for scholarly literature focused on individual words. This database, developed by the Göttingen office in collaboration with the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB), originated as part of the project German Dictionary by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (new edition).

The Literature on Word Research card index is now available as an online database that enables users to locate academic literature related to specific words. The data is based on a traditional card catalog that contained references to scholarly publications on entries from A to Z. Originally used as an internal reference tool for the dictionary project, it has since been digitised. The database contains around 14,000 entries and offers extensive bibliographic details for the field of individual word research. These records are directly linked via internal library identification numbers to the holdings of the Common Library Network (GVK), allowing users to place online requests for the referenced literature. This creates a convenient path from bibliographic information directly to the corresponding book in a nearby library. The implementation of the online version would not have been possible, either in terms of capacity or technical expertise, without the support of the SUB. We are therefore very grateful for this fruitful collaboration. Special thanks go to Antje Niemann, Ursula Stolarsky, and Ruth Welzel for their expert guidance, and to Michael Rzehak and Birgit Wiegandt for technical development and design.


Digitisation of the Göttingen Source Index for Volumes D–F:

Through the digitised Göttingen Source Index, users can access bibliographic information on the sources cited in the ²DWB (Second Edition of the German Dictionary). This digital index, covering volumes D–F produced by the Göttingen office, was developed in collaboration with the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB). The project’s goal was to link the Göttingen sources to the university library system, enabling users to go directly from a citation in the dictionary to the corresponding book in a library within the network.

In both the revised edition and the original ¹DWB, bibliographic references are traditionally presented in abbreviated form directly following the text citation. For instance, if a reader wants to know the full title of a source like “mönch v. Salzburg 27,17 M./R.”, they first have to decode the abbreviation. This can be challenging, as the citation system used in the ²DWB is not self-explanatory and is not documented within the printed volumes. With the appropriate background knowledge, the example above can be interpreted as follows:

  1. Small caps indicate the author’s name - in this case, “Mönch von Salzburg.”
  2. The numbers “27,17” refer to a specific passage: piece/stanza or section 27, line 17.
  3. “M./R.” denotes the editors F. Arnold Mayer and Heinrich Rietsch.

Further details about this source are available only through the internal Göttingen citation list, which contains all bibliographic abbreviations, date information, and source numbers. Each source is assigned a unique number, which links the abbreviated citation to its corresponding full title in the source database. This system allows users to identify both the short and full citation and relate them to one another.

Example:

  • Source no.: 3347.1
  • Date: (Early 14th century)
  • Full title: Mönch von Salzburg: Mönch von Salzburg, Die Mondsee-Wiener Liederhandschrift und der Mönch von Salzburg, edited by F. Arnold Mayer and Heinrich Rietsch, 2 volumes, Acta Germanica 3, 4, Berlin 1896.
  • Call number: 8° Ling. VI 325: 3, 4

Without these details, users of the ²DWB would have no access to the full titles of cited sources. Since a complete source index for volumes A–F can only be compiled once the entire project is finished, the most relevant information is being made available online ahead of time. This also represents an important preparatory step toward the final index, which will be compiled jointly with the Berlin office. The digitisation of the Göttingen source collection was made possible with support from the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB). The following work steps were involved: First, the source numbers were used to link the abbreviated citations to the corresponding full bibliographic records. Next, those records were assigned appropriate call numbers, allowing users to locate the full title in a library. Each title had to be matched with a so-called PPN (a library-internal identifier used to locate all holdings of a work within the union catalog). Since this step required philological expertise and was prone to error, it could not be automated; instead, two student assistants manually checked each title, identified it in the internal SUB database, and assigned the correct PPN.

Following this preparatory work, an HTML-based user interface was developed. For the ²DWB volumes D–F, you can now access a full title by selecting the “[ZIT] Citation Title” option in the database’s search interface and entering the desired reference, e.g. “MÖNCH V. SALZBURG.” The search result will show a title reference as a number (e.g., “Title in GVK: 136706134”). Clicking on this number will open a new tab displaying the full bibliographic entry and a list of libraries that hold the item. All listed sources can be ordered directly through the library union catalog system.

As an extension of the original concept, several hundred electronic reference entries have been added to the database. For these entries, a digitised version (sourced from verified library holdings or Google Books) is available for direct online viewing. These links are shown in the search results.


Word Archive:

In the Word Archive, you can view the complete keyword lists for the background material related to volumes D, E, and F. The approximately 2.4 million citations in the Göttingen ²DWB archive (for the letters D, E, and F) include many entries that, for example, were not included in the dictionary due to limited attestation. (In Volume 8, for instance, only about 12% of the words documented in the archive were actually incorporated into the dictionary, see ²DWB 8,5*f.) However, since the words not included still represent a significant portion of the German dictionary, we provide here the full word archive lists for the letters D, E, and F. These lists show which words are present in the ²DWB citation archive and indicate the time period from which the attestations originate.

Due to the lists being compiled and processed at different times and based on slightly varying criteria, the formatting of the entries may differ. For example, the period of attestation may be given as exact years for first and last citations in some cases, and as half a century in others. 

 

Links

Links on the German Dictionary:


Links on Other Dictionary Projects:


Dictionary Portals:

Wörterbuchnetz (Dictionary Network) is a digital service provided by the Digitisation Center of the University of Trier. It offers links to (retro)digitised dictionaries of the German language, including its historical stages and dialects.

The European Dictionary Portal is being developed by the European Network for e-Lexicography (ENeL) and is continuously expanding. Its goal is to collect information on all scholarly dictionaries in Europe and provide direct access to their online presence. Users can search and filter several hundred dictionaries by various criteria, such as object/meta language or type of digital format (digital text, OCR, scan).

Your Dictionary is an internet portal offering a wide range of dictionaries and encyclopedias for over 300 languages. In addition to English, German, French, Russian, and Spanish reference works, it includes many smaller language groups such as Icelandic, Kongo, or Faroese, as well as ancient languages. Most dictionaries, however, are designed for English as either the source or target language.