To date, there is no complete and critical history of the Commission for the Creation of the Austrian-Bavarian Dictionary or the Dictionary of Bavarian Dialects in Austria (WBÖ), for example in the form of a monograph. Such a history of the institute as well as the project - ideally from a multidisciplinary perspective and with a focus on the history of science - is still a desideratum.
At the same time, it should be emphasized that some historical research has already been published This research works deal with individual protagonists of the chancellery, the dictionary project and the University of Vienna or that of the Austrian Academy of Sciences: Relevant research in the history of science exists in particular in the context of a critical history of the Academy as presented by Johannes Feichtinger in 2022 together with Brigitte Mazohl in an extensive three-volume work, in which the Wörterbuchkanzlei and its protagonists are referenced several times (cf. Feichtinger/Geiger/Sienell 2022: 81ff.; Feichtinger/Geiger 2022: 210ff.).
Theoretically (and in terms of research ethics) however, one aspect that transcending critical history of the academy or institute is particularly challenging: The fact that the WBÖ is not a completed project that “merely” needs to be historicized. The dictionary articles and materials collected for this purpose have been worked on for over a hundred years up to the present day, with only brief interruptions and changes in the institutional structure and names - primarily using linguistic material from the first half of the 20th century as well as excerpts dating back to the Old High German period.
This means, however, that a present and future use of the dictionary materials can only be expedient and in accordance with scientific ethical principles and scientific historical reflection if the materials are not only viewed linguistically and lexicographically, but also as a historical source and the WBÖ is treated as a historical dictionary in this sense.
It should be noted that more than a century has passed since the founding of the Wörterbuchkanzlei in 1912/13 and that particularly the 20th century, as an “age of extremes” (Hobsbawn 1994), is characterized by massive political, technological and social upheavals, which have necessarily had an impact on all research in theory and practice.
Major turning points in this period were two world wars with millions of deaths and large-scale refugee movements throughout Europe (which always to be seen in the context of fascism and National Socialism and correspondingly aggressive population and expansion policies), the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust, as well as the rise and collapse of the Soviet empire. In addition, the inventions of radio and television as well as the new media and modern telecommunication had a widespread impact on people's lives in the 20th century.
Against this background, the völkisch-nationalist or National Socialist influence of Austrian and German Germanists and their ideologically relevant (scientific) political involvement is particularly worth mentioning and must be examined more closely, especially in the context of the WBÖ, to be able to adequately trace the history of the project.
The dictionary project has also witnessed multiple changes of political regime and even different forms of government: for Austria, this meant the transition from the Danube Monarchy to the First Austrian Republic, from the First Republic to Austrofascism, from Austrofascism to National Socialism, ten years of allied occupation and the official founding of the Second Austrian Republic in 1955. In the more recent past, this was followed by accession to the European Union (1995) and integration into the European single market as well as the changeover from the national currency, the Schilling, to the Euro. The scope and impact of all these historical transformations can hardly be overestimated, and for this reason the history of the dictionary chancellery should be viewed in a correspondingly profound dimension - also against the institutional background, which makes it clear that the WBÖ does not only refer to its location in Vienna, but that its foundation and the dictionary work practices associated with it took place for many decades in close coordination with its sister chancellery in Munich, the Bavarian Dictionary Chancellery at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. For a broader understanding of dialectological research practice, it is also relevant to bear in mind that the Academy of Sciences in Vienna was embedded in the so-called Cartel of (German) Academies from the 19th century until 1940 and from then on in the National Socialist “Reich Association of German Academies of Sciences” (cf. akademieunion.de), which also makes the völkisch tendencies in the Vienna Academy, its close ties to Germany and finally the developments during the Nazi era even more comprehensible (vgl. Feichtinger/Geiger/Sienell 2022: 134).
Particularly in the case of the most prominent protagonists of the Vienna dictionary office, namely Walter Steinhauser (1885-1980), Anton Pfalz (1885-1958) and Eberhard Kranzmayer (1897-1975), whose careers peaked in the era of National Socialism due to their National Socialist commitment, a complete historical contextualization therefore always ultimately requires a clear thematization of their involvement in National Socialist (academic) politics (cf. Braun 2015). Only the long continuity of völkisch or tribalistic concepts of language and space made it possible to connect to the various varieties of Nazi ideologemes. However, a corresponding contextualization should not take the form of a scientific delegitimization of the respective dialectological research practice, nor should it take the form of an activist labeling as “National Socialist”, but should rather be expressed in the necessary, objective investigation of the interplay between science and politics in their various aspects and specific periods, while at the same time taking into account the aspect of science and responsibility, i.e. aspects of scientific ethics. However, this focus is not only relevant historically and socially, but also for linguistic reasons: Namely, to understand the conceptualizations and visualizations of language, space (cf. Digitizing Austrian Maps) and history (vgl. Zimmermann 2023) in the traditional-philological (völkisch) dialectology of German, not least because academic teacher-student relationships had a decisive influence on the theoretical and content-related orientation of research and constituted or stabilized academic “thought collectives” (Fleck 1980) (cf. Wagner 2022 and Maierhofer: dissertation project).
In this context, the project History and Philosophy of Linguistic Research on the German Language in Austria places a strong focus on the WBÖ, its data material and protagonists.
References
Braun (Zimmermann), Jan David (2015): Das ‚Lautdenkmal reichsdeutscher Mundarten zur Zeit Adolf Hitlers‘ in der ‚Ostmark‘. Geisteswissenschaftliche Gemeinschaftsforschung am Beispiel der Germanistik von 1938 bis 1945. Masterarbeit. Universität Wien.
Feichtinger, Johannes / Geiger, Katharina (2022): „Transformierte Kontinuitäten. Akademieforschung nach 1945 im Schatten des Nationalsozialismus“. In: Johannes Feichtinger und Brigitte Mazohl (Hg.): Die Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften 1847–2022. Eine neue Akademiegeschichte.Wien. Band II. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. S. 143–160.
Feichtinger, Johannes / Geiger, Katja / Sienell, Stefan (2022): Die Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien im Nationalsozialismus und im Kontext der Akademien im „Altreich“. In: Johannes Feichtinger und Brigitte Mazohl (Hg.): Die Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften 1847–2022. Eine neue Akademiegeschichte.Wien. Band II. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. S. 11–141.
Fleck, Ludwig (1980): Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv. Mit einer Einleitung herausgegeben von Lothar Schäfer und Thomas Schnelle. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Hobsbawm, Eric (1994): Age of extremes. The short twentieth century 1914–1991. London: Joseph.
Wagner, Klemens (2022): Dialektologisches Wissen im biographischen Kontext. Eine wissenschaftshistorisch akzentuierte Analyse des „Dialektatlas Österreichs und seiner Nachbarländer“ von Eberhard Kranzmayer. Masterarbeit. Universität Wien.
Zimmermann, Jan David (2023): „Die Sprache(n) auf der Karte: Die Konstruktion von Geschichtlichkeit in der Dialektkartografie des Deutschen zwischen Cisleithanien, Erster Republik und Zweiter Republik“. In: Johannes Feichtinger, Heidemarie Uhl (Hg.): Das integrative Empire. Wissensproduktion und kulturelle Praktiken in Habsburg Zentraleuropa, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, S. 189–210.