Alex's MT Combination

[hansvonlieven]

G'day all,

As Stefan pointed out the old German is difficult to read. The printed books are, as Stefan says in Fraktur, a German print script derived from Gothic, sometimes erroneously called old English.

The handwriting in the Maschinen Traktate is an entirely different matter. Here it is written in an old German script that was later a little modernised in 1911 and then became known as Suetterlin. It was officially discontinued in 1941 but continued to be taught in schools. My generation was the last to have it as a compulsory subject. It is no longer taught. It is illegible to someone who has not been taught the script.

I am including here a picture of the script as well as a page from the Maschinen Traktate to let you see what difficulties any translator faces with these documents.

Hans von Lieven

Sample of Suetterlin.




Maschinen Traktate (Collins)

[hartiberlin]

Hi Hans and all,
yes, Bessler used a mix of S?tterlin and old German Fraktur
as it seems.

S?tterlin is very difficult to read, but one can get used to read it
after some learning..
Especially the "e" and the "n"
are often mixed up.

So your posted text says:

Bisweilen wird jede Form der deutschen Kurrentschrift als S?tterlinschrift bezeichnet.
Dies liegt wohl daran, dass die S?tterlinschrift diejeniege Form der deutschen
Kurrentschrift ist, deren Name am bekannstesten ist.
Trotzdem ist diese Bezeichnung unzutreffend. Denn es gab die
deutsche Kurrentschrift schon lange vor Ludwig S?tterlin.

Hard to translate, but I am getting again used to it...
See:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Kurrentschrift


Well after much investigation I did find in 2003 the testatment from
my grand-grand-grandfather from 1894, which I have found
in 2003 in the Marienburg ( today Malbork-castle archive, Poland) archive
(I was happy, that it was not destroyed during WorldWar II)
and several other documents from the land register books of this
timeframe and area. (When Marienburg and district Stuhm still belonged to West-Prussia)

Then I really had to learn these totally unknown to me "fonts" from this
former German timeframe..

To the most Germans today it just looks like secretive scrible and
nobody can read it anymore...

I also have to adopt every time my eyes again and sometimes have to pause, and
rethink, what some letters mean.
This together with the bad handwriting style of this former timeframe,
when there were no typewriters yet existent, it is a real hard job sometimes to
dechiffr? old documents.

[hartiberlin]

P.S:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Lessing_Kleist-Brief.jpg

Something like this is really hard to read
in this resolution and with this "lazy" handwriting style...

Could take half an hour to get all the words right,
sometimes only from the contens-interpretation..

[John Collins]

Hi all, following an interesting email from Stefan I have decided to respond here.

My interest has always been to the put as much of Bessler's works into the public eye as possible to try to generate some interest and eventually a successful working reconstruction of the original wheel by Bessler.

But I found the text in MT which is handwritten, almost impossible to read but I was able to use, in a limited way, the work of another translator, based in the USA, but also made some of my own corrections in the process.  And that is the way I see the understanding of MT - as a work in progress.  I intended that the text should be corrected and improved as time goes by and have no problem with criticism when people find that what I have written is wrong, at least it gets the subject talked about and that is the most important thing. 

Unfortunately I don't have any high res versions of the original papers although my own digital versions may be slightly better than those which have appeared here, but the size of them may prove too big to post.

As for copyright and ownership issues, I had to beg the owners of the original works for permission to publish the document I call MT (Maschinen Tractate) and they eventually gave me permission for a limited number of copies.  I only own the copyright on my versions of MT.

I should point out that the title Maschinen Tractate which I have ascribed to this collection of drawings may not be the one that Bessler  was referring to when he wrote to Peter the Great and offered him an MT as a book he could have in addition to the wheel.  That book was intended to include descriptions of real machinery such as Mills etc.

Doubt has been voiced about whether Bessler wrote the text and did the drawings in our MT;  I have no such doubts and will be able to offer conclusive evidence in a while.

I have never posted here before but am willing to take part if anyone has any questions to direct to me, but please allow me a day or so to get familiar with the forum.

Best wishes to all,

John Collins

[hansvonlieven]

@John Collins,

Welcome to the forum John, it is nice to see a dedicated researcher such as you here. If you need any help with some of your old German or medieval Latin texts Just ask.

@Stefan,

Congratulations on your command of Suetterlin. It is good to see someone of your generation taking an interest. A shame really, I hate to see this part of our cultural heritage being lost.

Hans von Lieven