Eberhard Kranzmayer's Deutschtum: On the Austrian Dialectologist's Pan-German Frame of Reference

Abstract

Abstract: The present paper offers a close reading of Eberhard Kranzmayer's texts from 1925 to 1960 in an effort to isolate Kranzmayer's major methodological themes. One such theme is a pan-German (großdeutsch) framework, in which the unity of German with a single standard variety is maintained. It will be shown how Kranzmayer used this assumption, combined with his belief in the cultural dominance of all things German, to perform "linguistic land claims" for Germany before and during the war. While his post-war texts are identical in argument, with some democratic window-trimmings, any land claims are more muted and cultural similarity is now stressed. Kranzmayer's time as director of the Institut für Kärntner Landesforschung, 1942–45, will be reviewed in regard to his claim that a people is determined by a standard variety: a status that he granted the Friuli, but not the Slovenes (the Windisch) and, certainly and always, the Germans. It will be argued that such pan-German mindset necessarily influenced conceptions of a budding Standard Austrian German and that, today still, Germanistik is largely bound by the idea of a One Standard German Axiom, in striking similarity to the 1920s.