Caspar Decurtins: Small language, monumental work

The condition «Chrestomatics» comes from Greek and refers to a selection of texts by various authors for study purposes. The 13 parts of « Romansh Christomathy »with a total of 7260 pages of Rhaeto-Romanic texts and 176 pages of German introductions and commentaries by the publisher, contains an enormous amount of material of philological, historical and folkloric interest: documents, statutes, laws, procedural rules, legal customs, political and spiritual songs, passion plays, religious pamphlets, chronicles, letters, diaries, travelogues.

The work also includes the most important collection of fairy tales in Switzerland, a large number of legends, folk songs, proverbs, farm and weather rules, riddles, nursery rhymes and spells. There are also archives on customs, children’s games, botany, folk medicine and superstitions. All this was published in Erlangen in numerous individual deliveries between 1896 and 1919.

In itself it would be « Romansh Christomathy » a remarkable life’s work. It is all the more amazing that its creator, Caspar Decurtins, was first and foremost a politician committed and exposed on many fronts, and that Chrestomathy was more of a by-product of his restless work.

Born in Trun in 1855, the son of a doctor and a patrician woman, Decurtins studied history, art history and constitutional law in Munich, Heidelberg and Strasbourg and obtained his doctorate at the age of 21. Only a year later he was elected mayor and grand councilor of the Disentis district, from 1881 he was a member of the National Council in Bern, where he was soon one of the leading figures in the Catholic conservative party and from 1902 its parliamentary group leader .

The «Lion of Truns»as he soon came to be called, was indeed a hard-nosed conservative, a Catholic unyieldingly committed to Rome and the Pope—albeit in a way all his own. “Catholicism is a big house with a left wing and a right wing – I live in the left wing!” he characterized his political position.

Decurtins insisted on his deep knowledge of the socialist classics and unreservedly collaborated with social democrats such as August Bebel or Hermann Greulich on social issues, the protection and improvement of the working class. Decurtins is also barely imaginable with many of his other functions in the later CVP and today’s “Centre”– Introduce party.

He was a staunch supporter of a humane Swiss asylum policy, whether for persecuted French nuns or for German, Italian and Russian socialists and anarchists. He fought against the “military juggernaut” and thought that money for the military would be better used in the social sector. The arch-Catholic also campaigned – in vain – for the lifting of the slaughter ban, because he saw more anti-Semitism than animal welfare behind it.

With such positions and with his impassioned and headstrong manner, Decurtins created many opponents over the years and eventually isolated himself within the ranks of his own party. In 1905 he retired from politics and became professor of cultural history at the University of Freiburg, which he had helped to found.

Caspar Decurtins was one of the leading figures of the «Rhaeto-Romanesque Renaissance», the movement that from the end of the 19th century helped the Bergler language, which until then had received little attention, sometimes even been contested and in decline, to scientific attention and cultural prestige (and finally in 1938 led to its recognition as the fourth national language). His large collection of works is considered to be at the heart of these efforts.

Decurtins had already started collecting folk songs, fairy tales and legends in Surselva as a 15-year-old high school student, and at the age of 20 he gave a lecture in Chur in 1875 about «The national anthem of Romansh» he could fall back on 500 lyrics that he had composed himself and with the help of friends. In 1885, he came up with the plan of his « Romansh Christomathy » to the public by sending a prospectus and at the same time having a detailed ethnological questionnaire printed and sent to informants throughout the canton.

He managed to attract a staff of associates to his causes. He instructed them to collect not only evidence of oral tradition, but also manuscripts and old prints. Unfortunately, little is known about the sources of Decurtins and how they work. However, many of his statements show that he was very keen on faithfully depicting the narrative material.

Unlike the Brothers Grimm and many other folklorists of the 19th century, Decurtins, who lived in secure financial circumstances, did not have to take commercial considerations into account when publishing his texts. The volumes of « Romansh Christomathy » appeared as single prints as part of a Romance magazine and was mainly aimed at a readership with academic demands.

There was thus no need for a literary embellishment of the fairy tales and sagas, nor for a compulsion to select and censor for the taste of a broad circle of buyers. That is why many variants, fragments, rough motifs and small forms of narrative material are included that would hardly have been published elsewhere. Originally conceived in two parts, the work grew much further over the decades – and is therefore anything but a textbook example of systematics and manageability.

Decurtins’ political stance and his commitment to the rights of the common people also influenced the perspective of the collector and cultural scientist. It led him to argue for an addition to conventional historiography, which was rather unusual at the time, but still seems relevant today, by including the perspective of ‘simple people’. Political songs, for example, were for him not only the subject of philological discussion, but also material for it story from belowa «precious resource to know the life and work, the toil and politics of the people, their thoughts and opinions on the national affairs and the men who made them up among themselves, the echo which the historical and political events found among the people .»

When Caspar Decurtins died in 1916, the monumental work according to his ideas was far from complete. With two more parts it was brought to an early end in 1919. A complete reprint appeared between 1982 and 1986 with a new, detailed index. Since 2011, the complete Rhaeto-Romance chrestomathy is freely accessible as a digital copy on the Internet.