Zur russischen Vermittlung von Germanismen ins Polnische während der Zeit der polnischen Teilungen
On the Mediation of the Russian Language in Taking Germanisms into Polish during the Partitions of Poland

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the phenomenon of lexical borrowing of German words into Polish mediated by Russian during the time of the Partitions of Poland from the end of the 18th century to the First World War. It is based on material from an ongoing research project devoted to the question of which path parallel Germanisms took into Polish on the one hand, and into the East Slavic languages on the other, from the late Middle Ages to mid-20th century: the direct path from German or one mediated by one or more of the corresponding other Slavic languages. It is pointed out that about one fiftth of the more than one thousand Germanisms that occurred for the first time in Polish written texts during this time period are accounted for earlier in Russian texts. Though definitely not all of the Germanisms in this set have been mediated by Russian, on the basis of the discussion of seven sample borrowings from the study it is shown that the mediation of lexical material from German via Russian into Polish may be con-siderably more extensive than has been described so far. Furthermore, it is illustrated that the question of mediation may in principle be addressed by four answers: directly from German, mediated from Russian, unclear, and both, i.e. directly from German and mediated by Russian. In the latter case, especially some of several expression variants in Polish reveal a clear affinity with German „originals”, and others with Russian adaptations. In many cases, of course, any answer for an individual Germanism may only be given in terms of the degree of probability.

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