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Independently of one another, in mutual ignorance of the endeavours of the neighbouring discipline, English and German studies have until recently followed quite similar paths regard-the critical constitution of literary texts, though German editors have generally been working without the solid equipment of analytical bibliography. But for about the last ten years a new theory of the establishing of texts has begun to take effect in German editions, and seems to be gaining more and more ground with editors. Seen from the viewpoint of English studies, this new theory might look like a regression from the position held by Greg to the McKerrow phase of editing. Yet the motives behind the emergence and elaboration of the new Germanist theory are not the same as those implicit in such objections as have been raised against the application of the Greg-Bowers principles to the editions of modern American authors. Therefore the recent efforts of Germanists may be of interest to editors of English and American literature, just as the Germanist concept must rely on the application of bibliographical criteria for further expansion and development. It has not by any means attained the level of the applied Greg-Bowers principles, which display a greater refinement and more solid foundations than any other editing procedure known to me.

It goes without saying that the common purpose of both is to elicit, through the distortions of transmission, what the author wrote, and what corresponded to his intention; and there is a common endeavour to proceed according to formulated rules. What distinguishes

more recent German editions both from most earlier editions and from recent English ones is fundamentally a different understanding of the notions of version ("Fassung") and of authorial intention and authority ("Autorisation"), and ultimately a different theory of the literary work and its mutations.

This new understanding resulted from a crisis which occurred when the edition of Goethe's works, planned by the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin since 1949, was in preparation. The Academy edition was to have replaced the so-called Weimar or Sophia edition, a historical-critical edition of Goethe's works conceived in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Just as the decisive phases in the development of English editing have been determined largely by Shakespeare scholarship, so also German editing, with its conceptions and its mistakes, has been shaped by Goethe studies. When Greg's fundamental essay appeared in 1950, Ernst Grumach, who was at the time in charge of the Academy edition, urged the necessity for a new edition of Goethe with a critically established text.[1] His plea was based above all on criticism of the Weimar edition and its canonisation of one particular authority, in this case the final revised edition ("Ausgabe letzter Hand") supervised by Goethe.

Over a period of years (1825-1830), and with Goethe's approval and guidance, his philological assistants, above all Göttling, brought uniformity to the linguistic form (for instance, inflexion) and to the orthography of his works, and revised the punctuation; Goethe himself only occasionally intervened and worked with them himself, thus conferring upon the shape of the work what has been termed merely "passive authorisation", as opposed to the "active authorisation" which alone can be binding for the editor. To the strong unauthoritative textual overlay caused by this process and approved by Goethe, were added those corruptions which the texts trailed with them. These were augmented in the customary manner from edition to edition, often for decades: distortions which could usually have been discovered only by comparison with early editions or manuscripts, a practice of which Goethe expressed disapproval. Grumach's criticism was that what had not been undertaken at the time, namely a real recension of the text, had not been undertaken by the Weimar edition either (1887-1919), in that the edition simply followed the principles valid for the "final

revised edition", and departed from the text only in the case of obvious corruptions, declaring "o n e edition sacrosanct and regarding all other witnesses . . . as contributory only". "The task of the critical editor", according to Grumach's 1950 phrasing, "can only be to produce the best text", that is to say, "to examine the text conscientiously and to the best of one's ability, taking into account all available textual evidence and all factors affecting transmission and development of the text, in order to produce the version of the text which gives adequate expression to the intention of the author."[2]

The realisation of Grumach's concept can be examined in the two volumes which appeared under his supervision, containing text and apparatus of Goethe's epic poems.[3] The transmission and establishment of the text of two poems is presented here in abridged form, as an example of a German edition approaching Greg's concept. The most important authoritative documents for Goethe's epic Reineke Fuchs (4312 hexameters in 12 cantos) are:

• E First edition in Goethe's Neue Schriften, vol. 2, 1794. Printer's copy not extant. Goethe did not read proof. At least 57 misprints (in Grumach's estimation), some of which are corrected in a printed errata list probably made at Goethe's request.
• A Works, vol. 10, 1808. The printer's copy was a revised exemplar of E, probably with considerable alterations in punctuation and reshaping of a number of lines by Goethe. There is no evidence that Goethe read proof. In Grumach's estimation, 54 misprints in the text.
• B Works, vol. 11, 1817. The printer's copy was a revised exemplar of A; Goethe had altered wording and punctuation in the first four and in the last (12th) canto. Goethe is not known to have read proof. 25 new misprints in the text.
• C Works, final revised edition, vol. 40, 1830. Set from an exemplar of B, corrected by Göttling according to Goethe's directives. No alterations in the text demonstrably attributable to Goethe. Goethe did not read proof.

The text of the Academy edition (designated hereafter as the edited text) was in this case not based on the first printing in E, but, following Grumach's general concept, on the text as printed in A, being Goethe's last complete revision of the work (B having been revised by Goethe only in five out of twelve cantos). Departures from the base text A occurred (1) in order to adopt such variants in wording and punctuation from B as Grumach attributed to the author, that is to say, in order to adopt the last certain authorial alterations; (2) in order to correct the 54 misprints in A, for which purpose the reading of the first edition E was introduced, or, if E was also corrupt, the reading of the nearest witness in chronological sequence, B or C; (3) in order to standardise the spacing.

Goethe's epic Hermann und Dorothea, with approximately 2000 lines, displays a rather more complicated textual history:

• H3 Scribal copy, written 1796/97, with several layers of corrections by Goethe.
• H4 Lost printer's copy of E, probably a fair copy of H3.
• H5 Subsequent list of corrections to H4, disregarded by E in three places.
• E First edition, separate publication, 1797. Set from H4H5 and from a further lost list of corrections to H4. E is a correct text without misprints!
• N Pirate reprint of a reprint of E, with 241 corruptions of the text.
• A Works, vol. 10, 1808. Set from a copy of N as worked over by Goethe. 141 misprints were reproduced; in two places the corrupt wording was varied; in two places the corrupt punctuation was altered; in the remaining cases the original reading was restored; 13 additional new misprints. No evidence that Goethe read proof.
• B Works, vol. 11, 1817. Set from A. Some new misprints; variants in orthography and punctuation, indicating a general scanning of the text but not thorough corrections by Goethe. No evidence that Goethe read proof.
• C Works, final revised edition, vol. 40, 1830. Set from an exemplar of B, corrected by Göttling according to Goethe's directives. 5 new misprints. Goethe did not read proof.

In the establishment of the text, the first edition was regarded as superseded by the revised version A. The last complete revision had to serve as base for the edited text, that is to say, A. Since the 141 corruptions which had penetrated from the pirate edition could not be regarded as intended by Goethe, but only passively authorised, the edited text reverted in these instances to the correct text of E; the two places where the corrupt punctuation had led to an alteration (probably by the compositor), and the 13 places newly corrupted in A were handled similarly. In the two places, however, where the corruption of N had led the author to make a correction, this correction was left in the text as representing the final intention of the author. Moreover, those three variants were adopted from H5 which had not passed over into E. Thus no variants were adopted from the versions subsequent to A, because none of these exhibited individual alterations which could be proved to go back to the author.

The extent to which this editorial procedure coincides with the principles of Sir Walter Greg is evident: each individual variant is investigated to see whether it originates from the author. If this cannot be made to seem probable, the variant is not adopted in the text. In this way the edited text appears as an eclectic (contaminated) text. The fact that the text is not edited on the basis of the witness containing it in its earliest published form (in analogy to the concept of "copy-text editing") but instead on that of the last version fully revised by the author has to do with the fact that German editorial procedure does not distinguish in so marked a way between accidentals and substantives as does Anglo-American practice.[4]

This establishment of text as carried out by Grumach can be taken as typical of German editing in the 1950's. But for reasons which in this case are not known to me, internal difficulties arose. The guidelines which Grumach had followed were replaced by new "basic principles".[5] These formed the core of a new concept which has by no means gone unchallenged, but which has been winning more and more support from editors, it seems to me, since it gradually became known. Implicitly, the stipulations include among other things some indirect criticism of the methods of establishing text which had previously been customary, in particular of Grumach's procedure. Inasmuch as Greg's concept and that of Grumach coincide, there is also implicit criticism of the former, when applied to conditions of transmission such as those typically obtaining for writers of German literature since the 18th century. I shall take up those points which are essential in the present context and attempt to develop the concept somewhat further. Matters of principle are raised above all by the following

questions: (1) Is contamination admissible, that is to say, may the editor transfer variants from one authorised version to another, as happened in the Academy edition and as the Greg-Bowers principles require? (2) What is meant by the (final or non-final) intention of the author, and how may it be determined? (3) What should be regarded as textual error?