ABSTRACT
The Middle High German period (eleventh to fourteenth centuries) It is hard to imagine the evolution of medieval German into a literary language without the assistance afforded by Latin. Existing side by side with Latin during the Middle High Ger man period, the German language gradually opened up new and increasingly specialized areas of usage. The growing number and typological variety of translations produced during this period reflect an increasing need for communication on many levels, practical, speculative and entertaining: theological, philosophical, legal, educational and aesthetic. This need, in tum , led to further expansion and differentiation of German on the normative level, particularly of lexical inventories , but also of syntax. After 400 years of linguistic development, intensely influenced by Latin, the German language finally reached the stage when it could cope readily with the formal and intellectual challenge posed by Latin texts. For example, around 1210, Albrecht von Halber stadt not only translated Ovid's Metamorphoses into German, he also transposed them into the contemporary idealized world of courtly gal lantry. Middle High German translations of Thomas Aquinas' and Meister Eckhart's writ ings effectively demonstrate that the German vernacular was now capable of expressing the
subtleties of theological and philosophical discourses. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, literary German had evolved into a comprehensive communicative system cover ing all areas of human activity and interest. In this process translations and related forms of interlingual and intercultural transfer of mainly Latin and French source texts , models and materials played an important part. As far as text production and reception are concerned, Latin-German bilinguality was the rule. Clerics as well as educated laymen wrote in Latin, or in German, or in both. Meister Eck hart and Heinrich Seuse, for instance , used Latin and German alternately, depending on their audiences; and Johann Geiler von Kays ersberg, the most popular fifteenth-century preacher, drafted most of his German sermons in Latin. As German gradually emancipated itself from Latin literary tradition, translations, parallel texts, compilations, ADAPTATIONs and paraphrases, especially of literature for special purposes, warranted the continuing contacts between the two cultures. Eventually , in the fifteenth century autochthonous German texts , covering specific areas of knowledge, were translated into other European languages, including Latin.
