Wow! Controversy in my ancestory...
Dennis
Liwwat Bocke whose journal is being questioned here. Her journal
and drawings were found in an attic and made into a book. I've seen
and read part of it. In fact, I found this article checking the
hours of the historical society where the book is sold because I
was going to buy a copy this Wednesday...
Dennis
German..
http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/nausa/auffe.htm
Summary
Despite assertions to the contrary, the materials, both those published
in 1987 and those still unpublished, attributed to the “pioneer Low
German woman” Liwwät Böke in western Ohio, are indeed authentic, a
closer inspection of both the illustrations, the circumstances, and the
linguistic aspects of the materials reveals them to be largely a
forgery. The publication of the texts and accompanying drawings in 1987
produced at first a wave of fascination, but questions were soon raised
about the originality of the materials. Such allegations of forgery were
dismissed by the Minster (Ohio) Historical Society which stated on 23
January 1988 that they “must and do accept the Liwwet Böke materials as
genuine.”
This reviewer accepted that judgment initially, but lingering doubts led
to further investigation. The results of that investigation leave little
doubt about the plagiarism of a number of items in the Liwwät Böke
materials and cast suspicion on other parts of the material that they,
too, were falsified or plagiarized.
A number of illustrations alledgedly created by Liwwät Böke in Ohio in
the period 1825-32 are quite demonstrably copies of drawings by Bernhard
Winter originally published in Heimatkunde des Herzogtums Oldenburg
(1913). The same is true for other illustrations. The language usage
also indicates that it could not have been written by a woman who was
fluent in High German; it is an anglicized version of German often
following English word order word-for-word. The translation of this
materials into English by Luke Knapke is quite good, leading to the
suspicion that whoever produced the Liwwät texts translated first from
English into German allowing for the retranslation back into English to
be quite smooth. Several texts alledgedly by Liwwät were not included in
the published materials. These reveal both almost scholarly command of
High German and a total inability to construct simple sentences in
German without error. A paradox that leads to the suspicion that some
texts were copied and others produced by a non-German fluent forger.
Other illustrations in the published texts offer evidence of plagiarism
of works by Ludwig Richter. Still others reveal themselves to be copied
from American sources. In the final analysis the entire set of published
and unpublished materials is questionable. This reviewer has three
parting thoughts: First, the factual errors in the published materials
can be perhaps be explained rationally; second, the forger has preserved
on Ohio version of Low German for which we can be thanks; and finally,
Luke Knapke, who edited the English edition of the materials, is not the
forger. He-and in the beginning, I, too-fell into the trap set by the
true forger.
ladako
"Dennis" <den...@bright.net> wrote in message
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