Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden laid the foundation stone of the Kölner Dom on 15 August 1248. A new foundation stone for the continued building was laid on 4 September 1842. The official completion was celebrated on 15 October 1880. Since then the Dombauhütte, the cathedral workshop, has had the task of maintaining the building. Today it has about 85 employees from different trades. In 2020 UNESCO added the cathedral workshop tradition, nominated jointly by 18 workshops in five European countries, to its Register of Good Safeguarding Practices.
The Grimm Dictionary
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began the Deutsches Wörterbuch in 1838. The first installment appeared on 1 May 1852. Jacob Grimm died on 20 September 1863 while he was working on the entry Frucht, fruit. The dictionary was finished in 1961, after 123 years. It has 33 volumes, 34,824 pages and about 320,000 headwords.
Weeks for One Word
In 1530, at the Veste Coburg, Martin Luther wrote his Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen, an open letter on translating. He wrote that he and his helpers had very often searched and asked for fourteen days, or three or four weeks, for one single word. In modern spelling the line reads: Und es ist uns sehr oft begegnet, dass wir vierzehn Tage, drei, vier Wochen ein einziges Wort gesucht und erfragt haben.
One Conjecture in One Manuscript
In 1917 Max Weber gave his lecture Wissenschaft als Beruf, Science as a Vocation, in Munich. He said that a scholar must be able to believe that the fate of his soul depends on one detail: ob er dies, gerade diese Konjektur an dieser Stelle dieser Handschrift richtig macht. That means whether he gets this conjecture right, exactly this one, at this point in this manuscript. Anyone who cannot do this, Weber said, der bleibe der Wissenschaft nur ja fern. He should stay away from science.
Sixty Years of Faust
Goethe’s Faust grew over six decades. He worked on the second part from 1825 until the summer of 1831. Before his death he had the manuscript sealed. It was published in 1832, a few months after he died.
Brahms and His First Symphony
The first sketches for Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony date from 1862. Including interruptions, the work took him more than fourteen years. The premiere was set for 4 November 1876 in Karlsruhe, under Felix Otto Dessoff. Brahms is reported to have told the conductor Hermann Levi: Ich werde nie eine Symphonie komponieren! Du hast keinen Begriff davon, wie es unsereinem zu Mute ist, wenn er immer so einen Riesen (Beethoven) hinter sich marschieren hört. “I will never compose a symphony! You have no idea how someone like me feels when he always hears such a giant (Beethoven) marching behind him.” The remark comes to us as reported speech, and the edition that quotes it does not name its written source.
Ten Years Before the Critique
Before the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Immanuel Kant interrupted his writing for ten years, with only a few exceptions. He then wrote the book in about four to five months, gleichsam im Fluge, as if in flight. It appeared in 1781. Two years later, Moses Mendelssohn wrote to Kant and called the book a Nervensaft verzehrendes Werk, a work that consumes the reader’s nervous energy.
Lehmann’s Note
Germany played Argentina in the World Cup quarterfinal on 30 June 2006, at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. The match went to penalties. Goalkeeper Jens Lehmann had a sheet of hotel notepaper with the names of the Argentine penalty takers, written in pencil. Goalkeeping coach Andreas Köpke had drawn the information from a database of 13,000 penalties kept by the Dutch coach Huub Stevens. Köpke said: Wir haben nichts dem Zufall überlassen. “We left nothing to chance.” Utz Claassen bought the note for one million euros, and it is now shown at the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn. Lehmann later admitted that the note was quite hard to read.
Words for Finishing the Job
Nägel mit Köpfen machen — to make nails with heads. To do a thing properly and completely.
Wenn schon, denn schon — if at all, then properly.
Ordnung ist das halbe Leben — order is half of life.
Ein Schnellschuss — a quick shot. A decision or product made at short notice, without thorough preparation, and the word is a criticism.
The Prussian War Game
In 1824 the young Prussian artillery officer Bernhard von Reißwitz developed the Kriegsspiel, a war game played on maps. His father had apparently laid the groundwork in 1812. Within a few months the game was introduced for officer training in all Prussian regiments. It gave officers practice in leading troops, as a substitute for experience they did not have.