Train, Joseph Karl von.
Chochemer Loschen. Wörterbuch der Gauner- und Diebs- vulgo Jenischen Sprache.
Regensburg, Friedrich Pustet, 1832. 8vo (110 x 180 mm). Title page, XII (instead of XIV), 294, (2) pp. With 2 lithographed plates (one printed on both sides) showing ciphers. Contemporary brown marbled wrappers. - (Includes:) "Jenische Sprache". German and Yenish manuscript on bluish paper. 4 ff. of linguistic specimens and translations on 2 bifolia and a single sheet. Folio (215 x 335 mm).
The extremely rare first edition, printed for the Royal Bavarian Gendarmerie, of Train's pioneering handbook and dictionary of criminal cant, here preserved together with a contemporary Yenish manuscript supplement. This copy matters particularly for the survival of the accompanying manuscript, which transforms the printed manual into a working witness of actual use within the linguistic milieu it sought to police.
This "continuously valued book of 'scoundrel literature'" (Hayn/G.) was compiled from criminal and court records as well as direct encounters with speakers of the jargon, and was expressly designed for practical investigative use. A German-Yenish and Yenish-German dictionary occupies most of the volume; it is followed by an introduction to secret writing systems, illustrated on plates, and by a scene from "criminal life" in Yenish with German translation. - This first issue was acquired en bloc by the Bavarian police force, which is why it almost never is seen in the trade, and only two institutional copies appear to survive (at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the New York Public Library). A second edition for public sale appeared in the same year, and a third, with Meissen imprint, in 1833.
Yenisch belongs to the group of Central European cant languages associated with travelling communities in southwest Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, drawing on German, Yiddish, Romani, and criminal slang. In the early 19th century such vocabularies were not merely descriptive curiosities but instruments of surveillance and prosecution.
The accompanying manuscript, written in a not always easily legible individual hand, appears to have been compiled by a police officer as a privately researched addendum to the printed manual. It contains a list of German words and phrases with Yenish translations and a draft German-Yenish letter to a "Lieber Freund", ending with the striking formula: "Wir wollen in Zukunft immer Chochemer Loschen waldibern". As an adjunct to the printed book, this manuscript considerably sharpens the copy's documentary interest.
Sachgebiete: Handschriften, Kulturgeschichte, Sittengeschichte, Sprachwissenschaft
02.09.2026 - 11:18
6500,- EUR
Inlibris GmbH
