Language eruptions.

The German language, famous for its compound words, owes thousands of them to the Classical period of Weimar. This photo exhibit offers a selection of the composites conceived by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Christoph Martin Wieland. Wieland created many new words while translating 22 of Shakespeare’s plays into German.

Weird sisters, fairy queen, spiessbürger . . .

Macbeth’s report ‘by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me’ gave rise to Wieland’s line ‘dem nämlichen Titel, womit zuvor diese Zauberschwestern mich begrüßt’.

The line ‘I serve the fairy queen’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream becomes, in Wieland’s translation, ‘Ich dien’ der Feenkönigin’.

Spiessbürger, now a derogatory term for a very narrow-minded person, originated in Wieland’s novel Geschichte des Agathon [The History of Agathon].

Goethe's dictionary

Goethe had an active vocabulary of some 93,000 words, which are collected and commented today in a special dictionary.

Dämmerfürst, ‘prince of dimness’ perhaps, is a term from the student jargon of the time for a slow, phlegmatic person.

Eulenseele, ‘soul of an owl’, is a person who loves solitude.

Liebhabertruppe is what Goethe called an amateur theatre troupe. Contemporary German also favours the originally French word Amateur, reserving Liebhaber mostly for romantic lovers.

Goethe’s word Meeresgeruchschnufflende is self-explanatory when you know what all the parts mean: ‘sea air sniffers’ are what Goethe called holiday-makers on the Baltic seaside.

The epithet Riesengeist, ‘giant mind’, was used by both Goethe and Schiller to refer to great literary and historic figures.

The dictionary’s Twitter account, @GWoerterbuch, also tweets a word of the week with the hashtag #GoetheWortderWoche.