German Law Dictionary

The German Law Dictionary (Deutsches Rechtswörter- buch, DRW) is a comprehensive dictionary of historical legal terminology in German. It lists the legally relevant vocabulary not only of Modern High German but of all western German language varieties and the different stages of their history from the beginning of written records to the 19 th century. The project was initiated in 1897 by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and is now conducted by the Heidelberg Academy.

^{Obenschwimmen – a word-entry from Volume X of the German Law Dictionary}

At present work is progressing on the twelfth of the 16 volumes planned. The approx. 90,000 entries published so far extend from Aachenfahrt to schwedisch. Every year, a double fascicle with 320 columns and some 1,000 entries is added. The freely accessible online version (www.deutsches-rechtswoerterbuch.de) offers a diversity of further research options and is supplemented by electronic full-text editions and facsimiles of historical sources (for example: the Project Heidelberger Hypertextserver – HDHS, http://www.hdhs.de).

The Law Dictionary draws upon a source corpus of some 8,400 titles mined via an archive with approx. 2.5 million references and a constantly expanding database of selected source texts.
Alongside entries devoted to specifically legal terms like   Anwalt  ,  Litiskontestation , Mahnung and Rechtsordnung,  the Dictionary also provides extensi ve coverage of legal aspects of everyday life reflected in such words as Almosen, Galgen, Kuss, melken, Nachbarschaft, Pfuscher, Querdaumen, rot and Salzmutter. The definitions are supplemented by historical reference texts illustrating developments in linguistic history and regional specialities, thus making the German Law Dictionary a window on over 1200 years of linguistic, legal and cultural history.

For further information about the Research Unit click here.

Chair of the Commission

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Knut Wolfgang Nörr

Head of the Research Unit

Prof. Dr. Andreas Deutsch

Team

Almuth Bedenbender M.A.
Anke Böwe
Birgit Eickoff
Dr. phil. Katharina Falkson
Stefanie Frieling M.A. (in Elternzeit)
Prof. Dr. Peter König
Christina Kimmel-Schröder M.A.
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kronauer
Ingrid Lemberg
Eva-Maria Lill
Dr. Stefaniya Ptashnyk

Address

Karlstr. 4
D-69117 Heidelberg

phone: +49 62 21 | 54 32 70 or 54 32 71
fax:  +49 62 21 | 54 33 69
e-mail:  deutsch@adw.uni-heidelberg.de
internet: www.deutsches-rechtswoerterbuch.de