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Old High German

Old High German is a key early stage of German, preserved in glosses, religious texts, and poetry. It’s a strong choice for readers interested in medieval Europe and the development of Germanic languages.

Dictionaries

• Old High German English Dictionary

  • Notes: You can add phrases of your own, as well; it’s a collaborative effort.

• English-Old High German Dictionary

  • Format: PDF
  • Notes: A large PDF file with a ton of words.

• Zedler Lexikon

  • Notes: Something like the Oxford English Dictionary, for German, 300 years ago.

• Grimm’s Dictionary

  • Notes: From about 150 years ago, and pretty easy to use.

• Etymological Dictionary of the German Language

  • Format: PDF
  • Notes: An old PDF, but has a lot of old information.

• Early New High German Dictionary

  • Notes: An easy-to-navigate web interface.

• Middle High German Conceptual Database

  • Notes: A pretty steep learning curve; probably best for only serious research.

Grammars

• An Old High German Primer

  • Notes: Older images of a book.

• An Old High German Primer HTML

  • Notes: A better copy of the above link.

• Wright’s Old German Primer

  • Notes: This book is everywhere, it appears.

• Yes, an Old German Primer

  • Notes: This is the book to use, I guess.

• Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart

  • Notes: An old German grammar, in various parts.

• A grammar of Proto-Germanic

  • Notes: An overview of the ancestor language. Note that there are multiple chapters, and the links to the other ones are in the opening paragraphs.

• A comparative grammar of the Teutonic languages

  • Notes: This is seriously the coolest book ever written. It’s from 1870 too!

• Video intro to Old High German

  • Format: Video
  • Notes: On Youtube.

Charts & Aids

• Old High German Declensions

  • Notes: Courtesy of the fountain of all knowledge (Wikipedia).

• Old High German tables

  • Notes: Inflection tables and some info about Middle High German.

• Proto-Germanic Inflections

  • Notes: A lot of useful information with charts.

Texts

• Old High German Texts

  • Notes: A site with many different texts, though it takes a bit of work to navigate.

• Old German Texts

  • Notes: Separated by century.

• Projekt Gutenberg

  • Notes: Contains many texts, a lot of which don’t date back that far.

• Austrian Literature Online

  • Notes: Some of these texts to date back a long way.

• Anthology of Medieval German Literature

  • Notes: Originally a book, it looks like, and easy to navigate.

• St. Gall’s Treasure Trove

  • Notes: A collection of Old High German texts. 4 Medieval Manuscripts in German] These give a good idea of the handwriting, too.

• Tatian in Old High German

  • Notes: One of the earliest translations of Tatian’s works.

• Enlightenmen-era journals in German

  • Notes: This is for serious scholarship, and you’ll need to know German as well.

Other Resources

• A brief history of the German language

  • Notes: You probably aren’t going to find something better than this online.

• Interaction of gender and declension in Germanic languages

  • Format: PDF
  • Notes: A piece of scholarship on the contemporary languages, but interesting nonetheless.

• History of the Teutonic Knights

  • Notes: As I recall, these guys were unbelievably tough in the computer game Age of Empires.

• History of Germany

  • Notes: Might as well start from the beginning, right?

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