Why does Luther's New Testament translation (1522) use lowercase letters but Luther's full translation of the Bible (1545) use the capitalization of nouns?
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1Just guessing: Rules for how to write (with special rules for the printing process and later for the use of typewriters) evolved and have only been codified with Duden around 1880. Maybe the habits changed between 1522 and 1545, maybe he got convinced meanwhile, that capitalization has advantages?user unknown– user unknown2026-02-27 10:10:31 +00:00Commented yesterday
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1 Answer
What you observe here is the development of an author/translator over time, and his adaption to maybe not rules (not established yet in his time), but rather developing loose conventions of the printing trade. He did not only introduce more consistency in the use of upper- and lowercase letters, but also applied increasing consistency in orthography over time, likely reacting to pressure from his editors (he never consistently applied these conventions in his letters).
Wittenberg was one of the centers of the print industry in Luther's time, and the industry was supposedly pressing for consistency in writing, in the interest of being able to distribute their products to a more widespread audience.
His editor Lufft apparently saw the need to provide him with a proofreader, Christoph Walther. Today, it is pretty much impossible to prove whether his change in writing was due to Luther's own changes (thus, adoption) or the result of Walther's corrections. His (in)consistencies in his letters compared to his manuscripts might propose the latter.
One interesting development was, for example, observed in Luther's writing of his city's name: His early writing before 1523 shows no less than 14 different ways to write Wittenberg, until 1542 he harnessed his creativity to no more than two: Wittemberg and Vuittenberg.
The same happened with his initial refusal of capitalization of nouns: Early manuscripts from 1520 show only 3% capitalized nouns, later writing increased this to 17%. But still, he didn't uppercase nouns according to modern rules - But instead took the liberty to use capital letters for emphasis, even in adjectives and verbs.
And he was aware: The prolog of the 1524 translation of the Old Testament contained the statement:
„Aber nu sehe ich, das ich auch noch nicht meyn angeporene deutsche sprach kan. Ich hab auch noch bis her keyn buch noch brieff gelesen, da rechte art deutscher sprach ynnen were.“
("Now I see I am not yet proficient in my native German language. And I have yet to see a book or letter that contains the right way of the German language.")
