Heinz Fähnrich – författare

The book offers a state-of-the-art overview of the complete history of Georgia from the beginnings until the present time. It contains an extensive list of sources, an historical geography and describes the prehistoric cultures as well as the political and cultural developments of the country: the first settlements and state formation in the second and first millennia B.C., the Parnavazid dynasty, Christianization, the invasions of Arabs and Turks, the Golden Age of the 12-13th centuries, Mongol rule, the disintegration of the state, the Russian occupation, the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in 1918, the military invasion and control by the Soviet Union, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the revival of the Georgian state.

At long last, with Professor Fähnrich’s Georgische Sprache here is a systematic description of the structure of the Georgian language. The book is divided into two parts, one for Old and the other for Modern Georgian. A separate section treats the main differences between the two. Illustrated by a wealth of examples, an overview is given of characteristic features, the stages of development, phonetics, morphonology, morphology (word formation, formation of grammatical forms), syntax and aspects of the Georgian vocabulary. The introduction presents readers with general information on the language, its history, importance, position among, and relationship with other Caucasian languages, dialects and written traditions.

The book gives an overview of the most important inscriptions in Early Old Georgian. It shows the development of Georgian alphabetic writing (from the oldest Mrgvlovani via Kutkhovani to modern Mkhedruli) and deals with the earliest Mrgvlovani inscriptions. These inscriptions are reproduced as copy trace and rendered in transcription, with the solution of abbreviations and accompanied by a German translation. The author classifies the inscriptions, both in as outside of Georgia, according to graphical, linguistic and textual features, and groups these per period. The result is in accord with historiographical traditions, both those of the Georgians and ancient writers, and Georgian handwriting.