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Rh notes 62 and 63) are of the same opinion. For the Roman Catholic literary historian Anselm Salzer (Illustrierte Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, Muenchen, 1906, ff.) this matter is settled. And Gutjahr also strongly operates with a modern High German unity in language ("Einheitssprache") prior to Luther. The one-sided manner in which in certain sections the "fact is emphasized that the 'language-unifying process began long before Luther and was ended long after him' already threatens to lead to an undervaluation of Luther's merits on this score before these are even fully understood," R. Neubauer wrote in 1903. In opposition to the well known saying of Jacob Grimm: "Luther's language because of its almost wonderful purity and powerful influence must be regarded as the very pith and marrow of the new High German language deposit, in which to the present day there has been very little variation, and then only at the expense of its power and expressiveness. The new High German can indeed be termed the Protestant dialect, whose freedom breathing nature has long since, unknown to themselves, conquered poets and authors of Catholic faith," — this lofty evaluation of the services of Luther in behalf of the German language has been characterized as a "Protestant' legend" (compare P. Pietsch, Luther's Werke, Weimar Ed. 12, p. VII).

Among the men who have carefully investigated this question Burdach and Pietsch, the Germanistic co-laborer in the Weimar Luther edition, deserve especial mention. The most and the best which Protestant theologians in their scientific works on Luther's Bible adduce from the philological point of view can directly or indirectly be traced, according to Risch, to the work by Pietsch, "Luther und die neuhoch deutsche Schriftsprache"