The young fellow at the information office by the market place in Wolfenbüttel was on his way to the telephone directory when I realized my mistake. So I hurried to teIl him that "herr" Justus Georg Schottelius was a "late" Justus Georg Schottelius. He died more that three centuries ago.
The young one looked at me in a statled way. Surprised or suspicious - but indeed alarmed by my question. So - he turned to a woman further behind a desk in the office. What did they know about "some" Schottelius? Fortunately the woman in her thirties smiled, and made us her company. Not very often someone asked for the late Justus Georg, she said - obviously to calm the frustrated young one. And especially no foreigner. Most people from abroad came to ask for the city's brewery of Jägermeister - and of course where to have a taste or even more than one.
She did not ask why I was interested in Justus Georg Schottelius, who died here in 1676. Obviously she guessed I was some linguist who wanted to pay my respect to a dear, deceased colleague. In a way the was right. I was a linguist, but not a supporter of the main work of Justus Georg Schottelius. Rather in an invention he made.
Nobody in the information office could tell me where the late Justus Georg was buried. Only that there was a memorial poster (or what they called it in German) by the gateway of a huge framed house named Statmarkt 5 opposite on the market place. There it said something about the enormous house - not only in the 17th century, but still - as being a gift to Justus Georg from the local duke himself. People with knowledge of German history, know that what is Germany to-day, in the 17th century consisted of a real patchwork of Länder of all dimensions. The duchy of Braunschweig (Brunswick in English) was one of the many, where Wolfenbüttel was growing to be a center of art and culture, owing to people like Justus Georg Schottelius.
Wolfenbüttel is situated some miles south of Braunschweig, in the middle of Germany - in the zone that was saved from the fighting of the Second World War by Nazi-Germany's surrender. Therefore Wolfen-büttel is still a charming town with a lot interesting old houses around. Justus Georg was actually born 1612 in another, even more charming town called Einbeck further to the south, but had to leave Einbeck to find his studies in different cities around the area - even in Holland. His education did stop in an abrupt manner in Wittenberg because of the Swedes that attacked the city during The Thirty Years War. Schottelius ended up for a while as houseteacher for the most prominent aristocracy in Braunschweig. After surviving another attack from the Swedish army in 1641, he was promoted doctor at the university of Helmstedt. And - his experiences from the war, made him opposed to everything foreign, both in the fysical surroundings on German soil as in the German language. He became what we might call a "nationalist". And he sat down for years in Wolfenbüttel recreating the original German language.
Back to the information office... this house on the other end of the market place, was this the genuin house from the years when Schottelius lived there? It did not exactely look like a house build in the early 17th century... Sorry, mein Herr, they could not tell. But for this honorable man, writer, poet, teacher, and lecturer at some universities, the magistrates of Wolfenbüttel during three hundred years must have dedicated him a street, an alley...?
My two allies in the information office looked at each other. Both as ignorant as myself. Until the young one brought a map of Wolfenbüttel to the counter. In the listed streets of the city he found what I had asked for: Schotteliusstrasse. But not in the central part of the Altstadt. Quite a bit away from the city centre. So they gave me the map with a "Good luck, sir!"
I crossed the market square to Statmarkt 5, but apart from the "poster", this house did not tell me what I was looking for in the life of Justus Georg Schottelius, maybe the small street with his name?
A taxi brought me there.
When I went there more than twenty years ago, there were no other option than walking back to the railway station in the centre. But I had finaly discovered a small part of my beloved Justus Georg Schottelius.
Why so? Beloved? I, that almost hated the trouble of learning German at school. I, who was afraid of pronouncing my first phrase in German, fearing I might say a wrong grammatical case or tense - or even put the few words I knew in the wrong order...
In spite of my - and other foreign students - anxiety-ridden problems for speaking the language of Schiller, Goethe etc, Justus Georg Schottelius made an invention that is almost passing as unnoticed as the knowlegde of himself as the father of the german grammar. Justus Georg Schottelius invented the semi-colon!
Some might say - and then what? But to me, I realize that this was of great significance to mankind. The world had its period, its comma, its colon. The colon represented what was to come or what to be, the comma marked a short break in life - as leaving the mobilphone at home for a change, and the period was the final end of one's life. Then Justus Georg Schottelius gave us the gift of the semi-colon: To tell us how to survive experiences of life when we might think everything is at its end. When we think it is time to set the period! End of life - for whatever purpose we are trying to survive or let go. An experience too depressing for being represented by a short span of a comma - continuing after a small break. Whatever the sorrow or dispair, there is maybe still a sparkling trace of life to be found within you. That is when you should remind yourself of the semi-colon of Justus Georg Schottelius. Not to choose the end - the period; but...
Yours Thor Thorstensen
