Jernej Kopitar, Vuk Karadžić and the Brothers Grimm

ABSTRACTThe article is focused on Kopitar’s work in linguistics and oral tradition at the age of enlightenment and romanticism and on his contribution to the South Slavic publications of folk narratives and linguistics, especially from the perspective of his cooperation with Jacob Grimm and Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. Jernej Kopitar (1780–1844) was a Slovene linguist, censor and scriptor in Vienna and was one of the founders of Slavic studies and the author of the renowned first Slovene scientific grammar book Grammatik der slavischen Sprache in Krain, Kärnten und Steiermark (Grammar of Slavic languages in Carniola, Carinthia and Styria 1809). He was also the translator of the Freising Manuscripts (Brižinski spomeniki). As an accomplished philologist, Kopitar maintained contacts and kept correspondence with numerous intellectuals of that period, notably with Josef Dobrovský and the great German philologists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Some of their letters have been preserved to the present. As a mentor to Vuk Karadžić, whom he encouraged to publish literary folklore, dictionaries, and grammar, he introduced Karadžić to Jacob Grimm who took Karadžić under his guidance. Kopitar and Grimm occasionally participated in Karadžić’s publications and introduced his work to Europe. The article focuses on the cooperation among the Grimm brothers, Jernej Kopitar and Vuk Karadžić.