Page:Thirty-five years of Luther research.djvu/133

Rh his Bible translation. Gillhoff has written a splendid booklet on this subject, of which we quote several passages in the footnotes.64c

Alfred Goetze calls attention to the influence of Luther's hymns in forming the German language. In our period Luther's language has been treated in its entirety by Franke, briefer but good by Neubauer. The lexicon for Luther's German writings by Dietz has unfortunately been left incomplete. Luther's influence on the German sequence of words, syntax, and above all things vocabulary, and the development of the meaning of words, in spite of the wealth of material in Grimm's German dictionary and Paul's German dictionary, has not yet been presented in its continuity. The close relationship between Luther's Bible language and Goethe's German has been demonstrated by Hehn. Brief yet comprehensive is the splendid characterization of the influence of Luther upon German literature given by Alfred Goetze in "Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart" III, column 2256. Column 2260 he also mentions Luther's well known edition of Aesop's Fables (1530 or 1538), and justly finds in it the incentive for the fables of Erasmus Alber. He whites: "The book of Erasmus Alber, 'Von der Tugend und Weisheit' (1534), characterized by the pleasant art to mould a simple material into a rich and animated picture, would never, perhaps, have been written, if Luther through his own work with Aesop had not given to this most faithful among his disciples the prototype for the fable. Thus Alber's work also is but a monument for Luther's merits in behalf of German poesy."