Okay, I've done my level best with the German of our Katte execution texts, and for the rest I need help. The 1731 pamphlet was hard!
1) Near the end of the "[s]eine Augen star..." "Starck?" For "stark"? Or what? If so, I was going with "he cast his gaze intensely on the lieutenant," but help me out here.
2) Bottom of the first page: "Stimme-... zu" I think I can make out "so" at the end of that word, but whatever comes before that is a truncated-in-the-margin blur to my eyes.
3) Next line: "verletzte." I want it to mean "replied," but all I can find is "injured."
From the Lepel report:
4) You were kind enough to anticipate most of my translation difficulties in your write-up, but I'm still wondering about the meaning of "Revers" in "so hätte er gern einen Revers geben wollen." You translated it "assurance," which makes far more sense than any of the translations I'm finding, which are "reverse" and "lapel" (as in underside or reverse of the bottom of a coat). What is with the semantics there?
5) Finally,
Er hat...gefraget...Katte sagen lassen, er möchte es ihm doch vergeben.
Is that "He asked for Katte to be told that he [Fritz] wished him [Katte] to forgive him," or "He asked for Katte to say that he [Katte] wished to forgive him [Fritz]"? I kind of want it to be the second one, because "Katte" looks like a nominative, but you tell me.
All right! Pending those final corrections, I have updated several existing posts under the "katte execution" tag and added several more. :D The tag now has 24 posts, oh my goodness.
I still need to do one final post outlining our latest findings, but I will do that some other time, as I'm tired and have a week's worth of comments I'm looking forward to catching up on.
Oh, and because it's impossible to scan a book cleanly unless you unbind it, I'm working on a cleanup of the Hoffbauer file to adjust for things like page tilt and fingernails, to make it easier to read. Some people have German skills, others technology skills. ;)
1.) It‘s „seine Augen starr“, „starr“ meaning „rigidly“.
2.) „...mit einer beweglichen Stimme zu“ - modern German would be „mit bewegter Stimme zu“ - with a moved voice he shouted to him.
3.) It‘s not „verletzte“, it‘s „versetzte“ - that old fashioned „s“ font strikes again, and it means indeed „he returned/replied“.
4.) Rokoko German with its lots and lots of French and Latin derived words: Revers in this context to me sounds like „reassurance“ With the caveat that I‘m guessing, I hadn‘t come across this particular phrase before and was at first thinking „reverse? Makes no sense“.
5.) You left out too much. The „gefraget“, i.e. old fashioned „asked“ relates to „He has asked approximately three times whether there can‘t be a pardon“, and THEN the sentence continues, „..auch Katte sagen lassen, er möchte ihm doch vergeben“, i.e. „and had told to Katte“ - the „sagen lassen“ means told by messenger - „that he“ (he meaning Katte) „should forgive him“. „Doch vergeben“ puts it more emphatically, „please forgive him“ would be better. So, in totem, and a bit more clarified as to the various „he“s : „He has asked approximately three times whether there couldn‘t be a pardon, and that Katte be told to please forgive him.“
ETA: also, saw your posting. Gottesacker is not a name. It´s just an old fashioned word for cemetery. Modern German word is Friedhof. They brought Katte to the army cemetery the Küstrin Garnison was using.
2) I agree with everything you say, but what I was asking was that it looks like there's a hyphen after the "Stimme" at the end of the first line and something unreadable at the beginning of the second line before the "zu". I understand everything I can see, I just can't make out one or more of those characters.
It looks like something-something-s-o to me, and since the previous lines have all or part of the first character cut off, and it gets increasingly bad the further down the page you go, I'm guessing this line is missing something as well. I've reached the limits of my ability to supply missing characters in this language, help. :)
3) Oh, wooow. That's not the old-fashioned "s" so much as a very poor-quality printing striking. The top of that letter is cut off, so it's a straight vertical line with no curve at the top to signal that it's an "s".
Look at this! That is not like any of the other "s" characters!
Thank goodness for actual German speakers.
4) Hee, I'm glad that at least one of the Rococo things that stumped me was legitimately hard! I did find a fair bit of archaic German that answered a lot of my questions before I had to bother you with them, but "Revers" eluded me. I was trying to make it into FW giving a reversal of the judgement, especially since so many of the other sources (Wilhelmine etc.) have Fritz saying he'll do anything in order to obtain a pardon for his friend, but I couldn't make the syntax work. It looked to me (as to you) that Fritz is offering to give the Revers, not trying to get FW to give it. So "assurance" makes as much sense as anything from context.
5) If I'm understanding you correctly, I think I left out only what I already understood and didn't need help with. At any rate, you've answered my question about the various "he"s that was confusing me. Thanks!
6) I didn't think it was a name, I was guessing that it was the word for a particular kind of cemetery, the one that in English we call a "potter's field" or "paupers' grave," specifically for bodies that can't receive better burial, whether because they're criminals, suicides, too poor, unidentified, or otherwise unclaimed. But admittedly I was going by other, more modern, sources I've read that stated that Katte, as a criminal, was buried in such a place. I did admittedly make this translation decision despite noticing that this particular source made it look like he was being buried in the regular army cemetery--but, given the rate of pay for soldiers and the fact that your average one isn't shipped home to his family, I was taking a guess that that could still be a paupers' cemetery. I've updated the translation to the more generic "cemetery" to be accurate, since you say it's just the word for any kind of cemetery.
And with that, everything is fixed except for that missing word or half-word that looks like a "Stimme-" compound to me.
1731 pamphlet was definitely a step up from the usual texts I run into, though it's hardly "decipher Fritz's handwriting and spelling" difficult. ;)
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German help
1) Near the end of the "[s]eine Augen star..." "Starck?" For "stark"? Or what? If so, I was going with "he cast his gaze intensely on the lieutenant," but help me out here.
2) Bottom of the first page: "Stimme-... zu" I think I can make out "so" at the end of that word, but whatever comes before that is a truncated-in-the-margin blur to my eyes.
3) Next line: "verletzte." I want it to mean "replied," but all I can find is "injured."
From the Lepel report:
4) You were kind enough to anticipate most of my translation difficulties in your write-up, but I'm still wondering about the meaning of "Revers" in "so hätte er gern einen Revers geben wollen." You translated it "assurance," which makes far more sense than any of the translations I'm finding, which are "reverse" and "lapel" (as in underside or reverse of the bottom of a coat). What is with the semantics there?
5) Finally,
Er hat...gefraget...Katte sagen lassen, er möchte es ihm doch vergeben.
Is that "He asked for Katte to be told that he [Fritz] wished him [Katte] to forgive him," or "He asked for Katte to say that he [Katte] wished to forgive him [Fritz]"? I kind of want it to be the second one, because "Katte" looks like a nominative, but you tell me.
Thanks!
Re: German help
I still need to do one final post outlining our latest findings, but I will do that some other time, as I'm tired and have a week's worth of comments I'm looking forward to catching up on.
Oh, and because it's impossible to scan a book cleanly unless you unbind it, I'm working on a cleanup of the Hoffbauer file to adjust for things like page tilt and fingernails, to make it easier to read. Some people have German skills, others technology skills. ;)
Re: German help
2.) „...mit einer beweglichen Stimme zu“ - modern German would be „mit bewegter Stimme zu“ - with a moved voice he shouted to him.
3.) It‘s not „verletzte“, it‘s „versetzte“ - that old fashioned „s“ font strikes again, and it means indeed „he returned/replied“.
4.) Rokoko German with its lots and lots of French and Latin derived words: Revers in this context to me sounds like „reassurance“ With the caveat that I‘m guessing, I hadn‘t come across this particular phrase before and was at first thinking „reverse? Makes no sense“.
5.) You left out too much. The „gefraget“, i.e. old fashioned „asked“ relates to „He has asked approximately three times whether there can‘t be a pardon“, and THEN the sentence continues, „..auch Katte sagen lassen, er möchte ihm doch vergeben“, i.e. „and had told to Katte“ - the „sagen lassen“ means told by messenger - „that he“ (he meaning Katte) „should forgive him“. „Doch vergeben“ puts it more emphatically, „please forgive him“ would be better. So, in totem, and a bit more clarified as to the various „he“s : „He has asked approximately three times whether there couldn‘t be a pardon, and that Katte be told to please forgive him.“
ETA: also, saw your posting. Gottesacker is not a name. It´s just an old fashioned word for cemetery. Modern German word is Friedhof. They brought Katte to the army cemetery the Küstrin Garnison was using.
Re: German help
2) I agree with everything you say, but what I was asking was that it looks like there's a hyphen after the "Stimme" at the end of the first line and something unreadable at the beginning of the second line before the "zu". I understand everything I can see, I just can't make out one or more of those characters.
It looks like something-something-s-o to me, and since the previous lines have all or part of the first character cut off, and it gets increasingly bad the further down the page you go, I'm guessing this line is missing something as well. I've reached the limits of my ability to supply missing characters in this language, help. :)
3) Oh, wooow. That's not the old-fashioned "s" so much as a very poor-quality printing striking. The top of that letter is cut off, so it's a straight vertical line with no curve at the top to signal that it's an "s".
Look at this! That is not like any of the other "s" characters!
Thank goodness for actual German speakers.
4) Hee, I'm glad that at least one of the Rococo things that stumped me was legitimately hard! I did find a fair bit of archaic German that answered a lot of my questions before I had to bother you with them, but "Revers" eluded me. I was trying to make it into FW giving a reversal of the judgement, especially since so many of the other sources (Wilhelmine etc.) have Fritz saying he'll do anything in order to obtain a pardon for his friend, but I couldn't make the syntax work. It looked to me (as to you) that Fritz is offering to give the Revers, not trying to get FW to give it. So "assurance" makes as much sense as anything from context.
5) If I'm understanding you correctly, I think I left out only what I already understood and didn't need help with. At any rate, you've answered my question about the various "he"s that was confusing me. Thanks!
6) I didn't think it was a name, I was guessing that it was the word for a particular kind of cemetery, the one that in English we call a "potter's field" or "paupers' grave," specifically for bodies that can't receive better burial, whether because they're criminals, suicides, too poor, unidentified, or otherwise unclaimed. But admittedly I was going by other, more modern, sources I've read that stated that Katte, as a criminal, was buried in such a place. I did admittedly make this translation decision despite noticing that this particular source made it look like he was being buried in the regular army cemetery--but, given the rate of pay for soldiers and the fact that your average one isn't shipped home to his family, I was taking a guess that that could still be a paupers' cemetery. I've updated the translation to the more generic "cemetery" to be accurate, since you say it's just the word for any kind of cemetery.
And with that, everything is fixed except for that missing word or half-word that looks like a "Stimme-" compound to me.
1731 pamphlet was definitely a step up from the usual texts I run into, though it's hardly "decipher Fritz's handwriting and spelling" difficult. ;)