Release date is 2026-02-08

Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

Handbuch der Germanischen Mythologie by Wolfgang Golther is a scholarly handbook written in the late 19th century. It presents a comprehensive, source-driven account of Germanic myth and religion, aiming to clarify the gods, cosmology, cult practices, and the interplay between “lower” folk-belief and “higher” myth, while serving as a practical reference for consultation.

The opening of the handbook begins with transcription notes, a preface setting the method and scope (prioritizing reliable sources, excluding bold conjectures, limiting the narrative largely to the first millennium), a list of linguistic abbreviations and pronunciation aids, and a detailed table of contents that maps the work from folk-belief through the pantheon, creation and world’s end, to ritual, temples, and priesthood. The introduction then surveys the history of research before Jacob Grimm, from early modern compilers and Scandinavian sources (Saxo, Snorri, the Edda editions) to Mallet’s popularization, and recounts debates over the authenticity and origins of Norse myth (Rühs’s skepticism versus defenses by P. E. Müller and Grimm). It reviews euhemeristic, symbolic, and naturalistic interpretations (Suhm, Creuzer, Mone, Finn Magnusen), acknowledging their contributions while stressing their limits, before outlining Grimm’s own seminal, linguistically anchored collecting method and its overextensions. Next it notes post-Grimm corrections (e.g., Wilhelm Müller), weighs the evidentiary value and pitfalls of using folk tale and heroic legend to reconstruct ancient belief (with references to Wolf, Simrock, Lachmann, and Müllenhoff), and introduces newer directions: folklore as “lower mythology” and anthropological comparanda (Schwartz), alongside comparative Indo-European, meteorological and solar readings (Kuhn, Max Müller), all under the banner of rigorous source-criticism. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Leipzig: Verlag von S Heirzel, 1895