GRAMMATIKEN DES DEUTSCHEN FÜR GALIZISCHE MITTELSCHULEN
German grammar books for Galicia secondary schools (in the second half of the 19th century)

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of the article is to present German grammar books used in Galicia secondary schools in the second half of the 19th century. Based on bibliographic and source materials, it has been established that Janota's grammar books were in use (1854, in a shortened version 1868, 1870, 1874 and 1875), Reben's (1870, 1871, later issues together with Popper 1874, 1876, 1878 and German 1882), Molin (1882 and 1886) as well as Petelenz (1890, 1898). Except Janota's work, all the others were published already after gaining autonomy in 1867, which was connected with a change of the Austrian educational policy towards Galicia. Since the mid 1880s, editorial and publishing activity of the grammar books' authors decreased. New methods of teaching German were introduced to schools (1892), which designated a secondary place to grammar. It results from the introductions to the above listed grammar books, numerous polemics that some authors (Janota, Molin) aimed at creating original handbooks that were comparative in nature and adapted to the needs of Polish learners. Nonetheless, a strong influence of German grammaticography is apparent in their works. Following the model of grammar books that were written for a native language user or their translations (Reben) distracted attention of Polish authors from methodological issues such as, e.g., material progress, a selection of grammar problems (all were treated as equally important) or forms of tasks consolidating learning material. The analyzed handbooks are typical of synthetic-deductive grammar teaching. They show concurrence in the material structure (phonetics, morphology, syntax and metrics) as well as the content selection generated by Austrian school curricula. With regard to methodology, it can be said based on an exemplary manner of the article description that the following scheme was applied: a definition - declination patterns - usage rules - tasks. Despite the common pattern, the grammar books differ as far as a way of choosing and presenting the rules of the article is concerned.

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