Deutsche Fachliteratur der Artes in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit by Bernhard Dietrich Haage, Wolfgang Wegner

Abstract

262 Reviews the subject butwithout much German because every quotation fromHitler's original text (in the I Ithedition of I942) isaccompanied by itsEnglish equivalent fromRalph Manheim's translation of 1992. Rash's book, in fact,provides a valuable commentary on thequality ofManheim's version (see, for instance, her remarks on pp. 59, 72, 85, 100, I I3, I I8, I29, I4I, i66, i68, 172, 249). The firstof her threemain chapters sur veys political developments inGermany from I87I to 1930, outlines Hitler's career up to I933 and considers influences on him, and then gives an account of thewriting and publication ofMein Kampf . The second begins with a survey of research on the language ofNational Socialism from Manfred Pechau in I935 toGeraldine Horan in 2003 and then considers possible sources of influence on it. She then looks at such matters asHitler's views on propaganda, his construction of a Feindbild, his glorifica tion of the Volk, and his belief in a racial hierarchy.This is interestinglywritten and well presented, but perhaps adds little towhat one can find in other studies ofNa tional Socialist language such as those ofCornelia Schmitz-Berning, Siegfried Bork, Peter von Polenz, or indeed Kegel. She does, however, dismiss themyth thatHitler created thousands of new words, and concludes that one of the few unique features of the language ofMein Kampf is theoutrageous exaggeration on every page (p. 7 ). Rash's chief contribution lies inChapter 3, a ioo-page study ofHitler's use of metaphor in Mein Kampf, which takes its theoretical underpinning largely from the work ofGeorge Lakoff and Zoltan K6vecses. (It is interesting tocompare Goebbels's use ofmetaphor; see Kegel, pp. 330-64.) The value of her approach lies in the struc tured categorization ofmetaphors, which presents a much more coherent picture than a random listof examples would. She concludes thatmost ofHitler's metaphors are conventional, though he does have some unusual combinations, and that some of his most repulsive are themost imaginative. Schmitz-Berning argued that itwas Goebbels, rather thanHitler, who developed the use ofmetaphors from science and technology inNational Socialist language, but Rash demonstrates that these are in fact fairly well represented already in Mein Kampf. The book includes an appendix of sample texts illustrative of precursors ofHitler's type of language, an extensive appendix (pp. 19 1-247) containing copious examples of rhetorical devices employed by Hitler, a good bibliography, an index ofmetaphors, and a general index. A third appendix, comprising a fairlycomprehensive database ofmetaphors found in Mein Kampf in the form of a PDF fileof 284 pages, is available online atwww.qmul.ac. uk/>mlwo32; thisURL is easily overlooked in the book, being rather hidden away on pp. 3 and 65: it might have been a better solution tomake the appendix available on a CD inside the back cover. INSTITUTE OF GERMANIC AND ROMANCE STUDIES, LONDON JOHN L. FLOOD Deutsche Fachliteratur der Artes in Mittelalter und Frziher Neuzeit. By BERNHARD DIETRICH HAAGE and WOLFGANGWEGNER. (Grundlagen der Germanistik, 43) Berlin: Schmidt. 2007. 468 pp. E29.8o. ISBN 978-3-503-0980I-9. This remarkably inexpensive book updates and more or less replaces Peter Assion's Altdeutsche Fachliteratur (Berlin: Schmidt, 1973), which I reviewed inMLR, 7I (I976), 2I0-I I. Useful thoughAssion's book was in itsday,Haage/Wegner's is even better.Not only is it longer and more detailed, itnaturally takes account of the enor mous amount of research undertaken in this area over the past thirty-five years. The ground covered is essentially the same: introduction, the liberal arts (trivium, qua drivium), themechanical arts (e.g. dyeing, tailoring, architecture, mining, alchemy, weaponry, fortifications,travel and navigation, horticulture, agriculture, hunting, ve terinary medicine, forestry, medicine, and surgery), and themagical or forbidden arts MLR, I03. I, 2oo8 263 (geomancy, chiromancy, necromancy, charms, witchcraft, etc.), but whereas Assion surveyed all this in I69 pages, Haage/Wegner take 289.While treatmentof the liberal and the magical arts isonlymarginally longer in Haage/Wegner, thatof the mechanical arts isverymuch fuller: I72 pages, compared with 77 previously. In particular, there is much more extensive coverage of alchemy (pp. 105-26) and especially medicine (79 pages instead of I9, with ten pages now devoted to Paracelsus alone). These areas reflecttheauthors...