A HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE VUK: This manuscript is the first collection of Serbian folk songs, and a German wrote them down!

The “Erlangen Manuscript” is the first major songbook of Serbo-Croatian folk songs. It is a hundred years older than the collection of Serbian folk songs collected by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and is shrouded in mystery.

The “Erlangen Manuscript,” a large songbook of Serbo-Croatian folk songs, is a hundred years older than the collections gathered by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. It was accidentally discovered in the library of the German city of Erlangen in 1913, and the first to study it was Professor Gerhard Gesemann.

In 1925, the Serbian Royal Academy of Sciences in Belgrade organized the first edition of the “Erlangen Manuscript” in our region, and besides Gerhard Gesemann, the Serbian philologist Ljubomir Stojanović and the geographer Jovan Cvijić participated in the preparation of the edition and the study of the songs.

Accidental discovery

It is estimated that the Erlangen Manuscript was written around 1720. This makes it not only the largest and oldest of all known records of Serbo-Croatian folk songs but also differs from previous ones in many significant characteristics.

Elias von Steinmeyer, a well-known Germanist, found an old manuscript in an almost empty drawer of the librarian’s office desk at the Erlangen University Library, whose origin and language were unknown to him. Steinmeyer asked the librarian how the manuscript came to him, and he replied that the Library received it around 1870 from an unknown donor.

The Erlangen Library then sent the manuscript to the state library in Munich and asked them to study it in more detail. Erik Berneker, a professor of Slavic studies there, determined that the manuscript contained a collection of older Serbo-Croatian folk songs, including several artistic ones.

The manuscript is written on high-quality paper, numbers 1010 pages, and contains 217 songs. Several songs are in the spirit of Dubrovnik love lyrics, while all the other songs are folk lyrical and epic songs. On the first page of the manuscript, the initials of the collector of folk songs are written in lavish Cyrillic letters, around which vines characteristic of the lush, restless Baroque wind, with wavy, harmonious lines. Such decorations were a real rarity for the 18th century in which the manuscript originated.

Mysterious author

Numerous questions arise regarding the mysterious “Erlangen Manuscript.” The year in which the manuscript originated is difficult to determine. Difficult, but still possible. What will remain an eternal dilemma is who collected the folk songs from the “Erlangen Manuscript.”

Gerhard Gesemann claims that the scribe of the Erlangen Manuscript was neither a Serb nor a Croat, and not even of Slavic origin. As Gesemann states, the scribe has a very poor knowledge of the orthography and grammar of the Serbian language and makes mistakes that no Serb would make.

His assumption is that it was a German from the administration of the Austrian Military Frontier, an educated man of artistic spirit, interested in the folk art of his border guards. He further thinks that the scribe returned to his homeland, southern Germany, from where the manuscript reached Erlangen.

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Heroes of the epic decasyllable

All the heroic, epic songs found in the “Erlangen Manuscript” are written in the characteristic decasyllable. The main heroes of these songs are most often hajduks and uskoks, then the indispensable Marko Kraljević, fairies, old Serbian kings and knights.

As the first among the songs in the “Erlangen Manuscript,” “Hasanaginica” is included, a ballad for which the famous German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe learned the Serbian language. We also come across “The Heroism of Mandušić Vuk,” about whom Petar II Petrović Njegoš also sang in his “Mountain Wreath.” The famous Serbian painter, Pavle Paja Jovanović, painted one of his most famous paintings based on the motifs of the folk song “Marko Kraljević and the Fairy,” which also found its place in the “Erlangen Manuscript.”