Tractatus Slavonicus
Tractatus slavonicus – The Slavonic Graphemoclasm

Summary/Abstract: Both August Möbius (1790–1868) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) attended Pforta Abbey´s Landesschule. Whereas Möbius as a mathematician discovered a non-orient able two-dimensional surface, the so-called Möbius strip or loop, i.e. a surface with only one side and one boundary, Nietzsche tried to overcome the so-called Hinter welt, the metaphysical realm beyond the physical one or the other side of being. Just as the Eleaticsphere symbolized the idea of the unity and the unchangeability of all being, just as the invisible hand reflected Scottish deism, just as dodecaphony underscored musically theVienna Circle´s logical positivism, so the Nietzschean overcoming of the beyond along with the eternal recurrence of the same can be depicted by the Möbius loop.In this context we might also regard the Moebius loop as a figure eventuating from the collapse of ontological systems. If the functioning of ontological and vital system sis characterized by a tension between two poles (the earthly and the other world, the life of this world and of the world to come, the above and the below, the masculine and the feminine principle, the temporal and the spiritual power, physics and metaphysics), it follows that, as a consequence of the annihilation of this vital tension and of the abolition of the difference between two opposing principles – as a result of a short-circuit as it were–, life is vanishing and death is occurring. Just such a process may be observed in the development of Slavonic writing.This article attempts to illustrate the cultural and historical significance of the graphematic changes of the more than thousand-year-old Slavonic writing. Emphasis lies on its development from the Petrinian reform up to the Leninist cultural revolution. With its revolutionary aspects, the transformation of the Slavonic script conveys a profound philosophical connotation. It reflects a process of secularization depriving the script of its metaphysical symbolism.Slavonic writing historically departs from the glagolitsa developed by St. Cyrilof Thessaloniki (ca. 826/27-869) in the 9th c. Into this alphabet designed for missionary purposes among the Slavs he introduced letters fraught with Christian religious symbolism: the Slavonic az (i. e. Cyril´s substitute for alpha) was depicted by the sign of a cross(À), the letters i (the first letter in the name “Isous” for Jesus) and slovo (i.e. word – “In the beginning was the Word”, invented as a substitute for sigma) were depicted by a com-

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