Modern Germany by Wendell G. Johnson;Katharina Barbe;

Author:Wendell G. Johnson;Katharina Barbe;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (ABC-CLIO)

Development of the Script

The first items written in German appeared relatively late (around the eighth century). Inscriptions on monuments use the so-called Carolingian minuscules, that is, noncapitalized letters written in the time of Charlemagne (742–814). These were clear, unified letters that were not connected or non-cursive, except for a few letter combinations such as “nt” or “rt.”

Wessobrunner Gebet

Before the advent of the printing press, everything was written by hand, whether on parchment like the ninth-century book of spells and charms, the Merseburger Zaubersprüche; or chiseled into stone like the Wessobrunner Gebet of 790, the first Christian prayer (Gebet) in Old High German. This monument can still be found in the former Benedictine Monastery in Wessobrunn, southwest of Munich.

The development of writing is closely related to the materials available at the time. Most writing during the Middle Ages was done in the monasteries; the monks used quills (specially prepared goose feathers), which they dipped into ink. Until the fourteenth century, the monks wrote on parchment, made from animal skin. Later, they used paper, an invention imported from China, which was much more inexpensive to produce. Mistakes often occurred when scribes copied texts. Edited documents show strikethroughs or the errors were scraped out and corrected. At times, scribal errors remained uncorrected and can still be seen in medieval documents.

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