Italianismi in Campe. Studio delle Verdeutschungen proposte da Joachim Heinrich Campe nel suo Wörterbuch zur Erklärung und Verdeutschung der unserer Sprache aufgedrungenen fremden Ausdrücke.

Freiheit ist die Seele der Handlung
J. H. Campe
This thesis aims to identify the Italianisms in Wörterbuch zur Erklärung und Verdeutschung der unserer Sprache aufgedrungenen fremden Ausdrücke and analyse the germanizations chosen by Joachim Heinrich Campe (1745-1818) to replace them. Although many authors have looked at Campe as a pedagogue, few works exist which are dedicated to Campe the “purist” and none focus on Italianisms or a specific semantic field. By looking at germanizations, these general studies set out to offer a broader evaluation of the work of Campe in the linguistic field, often starting with reflections on the survival or extinction of words he coined. In contrast, this essay is based on the assumption that Campe’s linguistic activity cannot be reduced to considerations of a mainly quantitative nature concerning the number of terms that he coined and that remain in the German language today. It is for this very reason that it has been decided that this work will not be restricted to words he coined, but will also analyse pre-existing words he used. It is clear that Campe contributed decisively to the emergence of many pre-existing terms and that the value of his work goes beyond the survival or the extinction of the terms he proposed.
An attempt has also been made to provide the tools to interpret the pedagogue’s linguistic work without making the mistake that many scholars make (mainly his contemporaries) of reading Verdeutschungswörterbuch as “Ausdruck einer politischen Wende [...] vom Anhänger der Französischen Revolution zum Verfechter rein nationaler, deutscher Interessen”. In actual fact, with his own germanization work Campe did not intend to ban foreign words from the German language but questioned whether they would be understood by the people and suggested germanizations which could make up for the lack of an education system that was able to give the people the chance to understand a more cultured language.
Besides the previously mentioned lack of studies in this direction, the decision to analyse Italianisms also comes from the interesting relationship which throughout history has characterised contact between the two languages. Although in terms of quantity, the Italian language is much less important when compared with the influence of other languages (particularly Latin, French and English), the contact between the two languages has left a significant mark on the history of German. An analysis of the Italianisms in Campe and their Verdeutschungen therefore allows us to trace not only the work of the scholar but also the history of contact between the Italian and the German language up to 1800.