Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (or Mälzel; August 15, 1772 – July 21, 1838) was a German inventor , engineer, and showman, best known for manufacturing a metronome and several music-playing automatons , and displaying a fraudulent chess machine. He worked with Beethoven to compose a piece of music for one of his inventions.
135-548: The Mechanical Turk , also known as the Automaton Chess Player ( German : Schachtürke , lit. ' chess Turk ' ; Hungarian : A Török ), or simply The Turk , was a fraudulent chess -playing machine constructed in 1770, which appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent. For 84 years, it was exhibited on tours by various owners as an automaton . The machine survived and continued giving occasional exhibitions until 1854, when
270-460: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it
405-466: A power loom within the year. Sir Charles Wheatstone , an inventor, saw a later appearance of the Turk while it was owned by Mälzel. He also saw some of Mälzel's speaking machines, and Mälzel later presented a demonstration of the speaking machines to the researcher and his teenage son. Alexander Graham Bell obtained a copy of a book by Wolfgang von Kempelen on speaking machines after being inspired by seeing
540-402: A second language , and 75–100 million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220 million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90 million people, or 16% of
675-587: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become
810-412: A "mere bagatelle ", as he was not pleased with its popularity and would rather continue work on steam engines and machines that replicated human speech. In 1781, Kempelen was ordered by Emperor Joseph II to reconstruct the Turk and deliver it to Vienna for a state visit from Grand Duke Paul of Russia and his wife. The appearance was so successful that Grand Duke Paul suggested a tour of Europe for
945-745: A Mechanical Turk as a school project. Walter Benjamin alludes to the Mechanical Turk in the first thesis of his Theses on the Philosophy of History ( Über den Begriff der Geschichte ), written in 1940. The Mechanical Turk appears as part of a ritual for the Stranger, an entity that manifests via the uncanny valley , in episode 116, "The Show Must Go On", of the British horror podcast The Magnus Archives . German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] )
1080-555: A Richmond newspaper) precisely when and where this encounter took place. Jingetsu Isomi's 2013 manga series Chrono Monochrome is about a 21st-century Japanese child chess prodigy who travels back in time and becomes the Turk's original operator. In 2023, the story "Alone Together" from the Tales from the Pizzaplex book series, itself a part of the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise, features
1215-526: A chess playing automaton called the Turk, closely based on the real Kempelen model. Just as they are about to escape over the border, the Baron is summoned to Saint Petersburg to present the Turk to the empress Catherine II . In an echo of the Napoleon incident, Catherine attempts to cheat the Turk, who wipes all the pieces from the board in response. The Turk has also inspired works of literary fiction. In 1849, just
1350-535: A chess-playing machine must always win). Mälzel eventually took the Turk on his second tour to Havana , Cuba . In Cuba, Schlumberger died of yellow fever in February 1838, leaving Mälzel without an operator for his machine. Dejected, Mälzel died at sea in July 1838 at the age of 65 during his return trip, leaving his machinery with the ship captain. When the ship on which Mälzel died returned, his various machines, including
1485-428: A clear view for the spectators. In a surprise move, Napoleon took the first turn instead of allowing the Turk to make the first move, as was usual; but Mälzel allowed the game to continue. Shortly thereafter, Napoleon attempted an illegal move. Upon noticing the move, the Turk returned the piece to its original spot and continued the game. Napoleon attempted the illegal move a second time, and the Turk responded by removing
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#17330850575131620-488: A clockwork-type sound to be played when the Turk made a move, further adding to the machinery illusion, and for the Turk to make various facial expressions. A voice box was added following the Turk's acquisition by Mälzel, allowing the machine to say "Échec!" ( French for " check ") during matches. An operator inside the machine also had tools to assist in communicating with the presenter outside. Two brass discs equipped with numbers were positioned opposite each other on
1755-449: A deposition claiming that Maelzel had defrauded him, claiming ownership of this music, and illegally staging performances of it from an inaccurate transcription. Beethoven described Maelzel in this deposition as "a rude, churlish man, entirely devoid of education or cultivation". In 1816 Maelzel became established in Paris as manufacturer of a metronome . Maelzel's metronome was copied from
1890-459: A few years before the Turk was destroyed, Edgar Allan Poe published a tale "Von Kempelen and His Discovery". Ambrose Bierce 's short story " Moxon's Master ", published in 1909, is a morbid tale about a chess-playing automaton that resembles the Turk. In 1938, John Dickson Carr published The Crooked Hinge , a locked-room mystery in his line of Dr. Gideon Fell detective novels. Among the puzzles presented included an automaton that operates in
2025-404: A fire swept through the museum where it was kept, destroying the machine. Afterwards, articles were published by a son of the machine's owner revealing its secrets to the public: that it was an elaborate hoax , suspected by some, but never proven in public while it still existed. Constructed and unveiled in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734–1804) to impress Empress Maria Theresa of Austria ,
2160-709: A fire that started at the National Theater in Philadelphia reached the Museum and destroyed the Turk. Mitchell's son Silas Weir Mitchell believed he had heard "through the struggling flames ... the last words of our departed friend, the sternly whispered, oft repeated syllables, 'echec! echec!! ' " John Gaughan , an American manufacturer of equipment for magicians based in Los Angeles , spent $ 120,000 (approx. $ 369,856 in 2024) building his own version of Kempelen's machine over
2295-506: A five-year period from 1984. The machine uses the original chessboard, which was stored separately from the original Turk and was not destroyed in the fire. The first public display of Gaughan's Turk was in November 1989 at a history of magic conference. The machine was presented much as Kempelen presented the original, except that the opponent was replaced by a computer running a chess program . While many books and articles were written during
2430-404: A form of metronome , had tried to purchase the Turk once previously, before Kempelen's death. The original attempt had failed, owing to Kempelen's asking price of 20,000 francs ; Kempelen's son sold the machine to Mälzel for half this sum. Upon acquiring the Turk, Mälzel had to learn its secrets and make some repairs to get it back in working order. His stated goal was to make explaining the Turk
2565-522: A further means of misdirection, the Turk came with a small wooden coffin-like box that the presenter would place on the top of the cabinet. While Johann Nepomuk Mälzel , a later owner of the machine, did not use the box, Kempelen often peered into the box during play, suggesting that the box controlled some aspect of the machine. The box was believed by some to have supernatural power; Karl Gottlieb von Windisch wrote in his 1784 book Inanimate Reason that "[ o]ne old lady, in particular, who had not forgotten
2700-413: A greater challenge. While the completion of this goal took ten years, the Turk still made appearances, most notably with Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1809, Napoleon I of France arrived at Schönbrunn Palace to play the Turk. According to an eyewitness report, Mälzel took responsibility for the construction of the machine while preparing the game, and the Turk ( Johann Baptist Allgaier ) saluted Napoleon before
2835-556: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from
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#17330850575132970-520: A letter board. The operator, whose identity during the period when Kempelen presented the machine at Schönbrunn Palace is unknown, was able to do this in English, French, and German. Carl Friedrich Hindenburg , a university mathematician, kept a record of the conversations during the Turk's time in Leipzig and published it in 1789 as Über den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen und dessen Nachbildung (or On
3105-559: A match with Philidor at the Académie des Sciences . While Philidor won his match with the Turk, Philidor's son noted that his father called it "his most fatiguing game of chess ever!" The Turk's final game in Paris was against Benjamin Franklin , who was serving as ambassador to France from the United States. Franklin reportedly enjoyed the game with the Turk and was interested in the machine for
3240-529: A metronome invented earlier by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel . By 1817, Beethoven and Maelzel appear to have reconciled. Beethoven wrote glowingly of Maelzel's metronome and declared he would stop using traditional tempo indications like allegro . In 1817 Maelzel left Paris for Munich, and then again took up his abode in Vienna. At this time he found means to repurchase von Kempelen's chess player, and, after spending several preparatory years in constructing and improving
3375-438: A musical chronometer. In 1813 Maelzel and Beethoven were on familiar terms. Maelzel conceived and musically sketched Wellington's Victory , or The Battle of Vitoria for which Beethoven composed the music to be played on Maelzel's 'mechanical orchestra', the panharmonicon ; they also gave several concerts, at which Beethoven's symphonies were interspersed with the performances of Maelzel's automatons. In 1814, Beethoven wrote
3510-453: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained
3645-623: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In
3780-475: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it
3915-534: A similar machine built by Wheatstone; Bell went on to file the first successful patent for the telephone . A play, The Automaton Chess Player , was presented in New York City in 1845. The advertising, as well as an article that appeared in The Illustrated London News , claimed that the play featured Kempelen's Turk, but it was in fact a copy of the Turk created by J. Walker, who had earlier presented
4050-706: A story that the New York chess players could not handle full games and that the Boston players were much better opponents. This was a success for many weeks, and the tour moved to Philadelphia for three months. Following Philadelphia, the Turk moved to Baltimore , where it played for a number of months, including losing a match against Charles Carroll , a signer of the Declaration of Independence . The exhibition in Baltimore brought news that two brothers had constructed their own machine,
4185-410: A trained boy (or very small adult) who followed the directions of the chess player who was hidden elsewhere on stage or in the theater ..." More books were published about the Turk toward the end of the 20th century. Along with Bell's book, Charles Michael Carroll's The Great Chess Automaton (1975) focused more on the studies of the Turk. Bradley Ewart's Chess: Man vs. Machine (1980) discussed
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4320-466: A variety of opponents, including a lawyer named Mr. Bernard who was a second rank in chess ability. Following the sessions at Versailles, demands increased for a match with François-André Danican Philidor , who was considered the best chess player of his time. Moving to the Café de la Régence , the machine played many of the most skilled players, often losing (e.g. against Bernard and Verdoni ), until securing
4455-472: A voice box so the machine could say "Échec!" when placing a player in check. In 1819, Mälzel took the Turk on a tour of the United Kingdom. There were several new developments in the act, such as allowing the opponent the first move and eliminating the king's bishop's pawn from the Turk's pieces. This pawn handicap created further interest in the Turk, and spawned a book by W. J. Hunneman chronicling
4590-637: A way that is unexplainable to the characters. Gene Wolfe 's 1977 science fiction short story "The Marvellous Brass Chessplaying Automaton" also features a device very similar to the Turk. Robert Loehr's 2007 novel The Chess Machine (published in the UK as The Secrets of the Chess Machine ) focuses on the man inside the machine. F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre 's 2007 story "The Clockwork Horror" reconstructs Edgar Allan Poe's original encounter with Mälzel's chess-player, and also establishes (from contemporary advertisements in
4725-688: Is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and
4860-580: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as
4995-596: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German
5130-546: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic
5265-472: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German
5400-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25 million speak it as
5535-520: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in
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5670-595: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as
5805-620: Is known. The first imitation was made while Mälzel was in Baltimore . Created by the Brothers Walker, the "American Chess Player" made its debut in May 1827 in New York. El Ajedrecista was built in 1912 by Leonardo Torres Quevedo as a chess-playing automaton and made its public debut during the Paris World Fair of 1914. Capable of playing rook and king versus king endgames using electromagnets, it
5940-559: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are
6075-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and
6210-587: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as
6345-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German
6480-510: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c. 1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period
6615-566: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish
6750-481: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers
6885-673: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to
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#17330850575137020-627: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as
7155-522: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share
7290-417: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language
7425-514: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout
7560-724: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in
7695-644: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c. 765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in
7830-640: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung
7965-536: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit. ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this
8100-503: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German
8235-471: The Walker Chess-player . Mälzel viewed the competing machine and attempted to buy it, but the offer was declined and the duplicate machine toured for a number of years, never receiving the fame that Mälzel's machine did and eventually falling into obscurity. Mälzel continued with exhibitions around the United States until 1828, when he took some time off and visited Europe, returning in 1829. Throughout
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#17330850575138370-462: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from
8505-613: The 1830s, he continued to tour the United States, exhibiting the machine as far west as the Mississippi River and visiting Canada . In Richmond , Virginia , the Turk was observed by Edgar Allan Poe , who was writing for the Southern Literary Messenger . Poe's essay " Maelzel's Chess Player " was published in April 1836 and is the most famous essay on the Turk, even though many of Poe's hypotheses were incorrect (such as that
8640-463: The Chessplayer of Mr. von Kempelen And Its Replica ). Topics of questions put to and answered by the Turk included its age, marital status, and its secret workings. Following word of its debut, interest in the machine grew across Europe. Kempelen, however, was more interested in his other projects and avoided exhibiting the Turk, often lying about the machine's repair status to prospective challengers. Von Windisch wrote at one point that Kempelen "refused
8775-614: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In
8910-414: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of
9045-417: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of
9180-399: The German states; the invention of the printing press c. 1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of
9315-623: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by
9450-547: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are
9585-644: The Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as a recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ), the Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German
9720-507: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c. thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c. 1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy
9855-552: The Turk and published his findings in Über den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen und dessen Nachbildung , along with illustrations showing his beliefs about how the machine operated. It then moved to Amsterdam , after which Kempelen is said to have accepted an invitation to the Sanssouci palace in Potsdam of Frederick the Great , King of Prussia . The story goes that Frederick enjoyed
9990-531: The Turk as well as other purported chess-playing automatons. It was not until the creation of Deep Blue , IBM 's attempt at a computer that could challenge the world's best players, that interest increased again, and two more books were published: Gerald M. Levitt's The Turk, Chess Automaton (2000), and Tom Standage's The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine , published in 2002. The Turk
10125-524: The Turk for 30,000 francs—three times what Mälzel had paid—and kept it for four years. In 1815, Mälzel returned to Beauharnais in Munich and asked to buy the Turk back. There exist two versions of how much he had to pay, eventually working out an agreement. One version appeared in the French periodical Le Palamède . The complete story does not make a lot of sense since Mälzel visited Paris again, and he also could import his "Conflagration of Moscow". Following
10260-399: The Turk kept its left arm on the cushion. The Turk could nod twice if it threatened its opponent's queen , and three times upon placing the king in check. If an opponent made an illegal move, the Turk would shake its head, move the piece back and make its own move, thus forcing a forfeit of its opponent's move. Louis Dutens , a traveller who observed a showing of the Turk, attempted to trick
10395-472: The Turk so much that he paid a large sum of money to Kempelen in exchange for the Turk's secrets. Frederick never gave the secret away, but was reportedly disappointed to learn how the machine worked. This story is apocryphal; there is no evidence of the Turk's encounter with Frederick, the first mention of which comes in the early 19th century, by which time the Turk was incorrectly said to have played against George III of Great Britain. It seems most likely that
10530-399: The Turk was Count Ludwig von Cobenzl , an Austrian courtier at the palace. Along with other challengers that day, he was quickly defeated, with observers of the match stating that the machine played aggressively, and typically beat its opponents within thirty minutes. Another part of the machine's exhibition was the completion of the knight's tour , a famed chess puzzle. The puzzle requires
10665-503: The Turk was an elaborate hoax with a small child inside the machine, describing the machine as "a complicated piece of clockwork ... which is nothing more, than one, of many other ingenious devices, to misguide and delude the observers". After a year in London, Kempelen and the Turk travelled to Leipzig, stopping in various European cities along the way. From Leipzig, it went to Dresden , where Joseph Friedrich Freiherr von Racknitz viewed
10800-426: The Turk's life about how it worked, most were inaccurate, drawing incorrect inferences from external observation. The first articles on the mechanism were published in a French magazine entitled Le Magasin pittoresque in 1834. It was not until Silas Mitchell 's series of articles for The Chess Monthly that the secret was fully revealed. Mitchell, son of the final private owner of the Turk, wrote that "no secret
10935-497: The Turk, a request to which Kempelen reluctantly agreed. The Turk began its European tour in 1783, beginning with an appearance in France in April. A stop at Versailles beginning on April 17, preceded an exhibition in Paris, where the Turk lost a match to Charles Godefroy de La Tour d'Auvergne , the Duc de Bouillon . Upon arrival in Paris in May 1783, it was displayed to the public and played
11070-421: The Turk, fell into the hands of Mälzel's friend, the businessman John Ohl. He attempted to auction off the Turk, but owing to low bidding ultimately bought it himself for $ 400. (approx. $ 13,600 in 2024) Only when John Kearsley Mitchell from Philadelphia, Edgar Allan Poe's personal physician and an admirer of the Turk, approached Ohl did the Turk change hands again. Mitchell formed a restoration club and went about
11205-533: The Walker Chess-player. Raymond Bernard's silent feature film The Chess Player (1927) weaves elements from the real story of the Turk into an adventure tale set in the aftermath of the first of the Partitions of Poland in 1772. The film's "Baron von Kempelen" helps a dashing young Polish nationalist on the run from the occupying Russians, who also happens to be an expert chess player, by hiding him inside
11340-400: The arm of the Turk over the chessboard on the cabinet. The range of motion allowed the operator to move the Turk's arm up and down, and turning the lever would open and close the Turk's hand, allowing it to grasp the pieces on the board. All of this was made visible to the operator by using a simple candle, which had a ventilation system through the model. Other parts of the machinery allowed for
11475-555: The business of repairing the Turk for public appearances, completing the restoration in 1840. As interest in the Turk outgrew its location, Mitchell and his club chose to donate the machine to the Philadelphia Museum of Charles Willson Peale , also known as the Chinese Museum. While the Turk still occasionally gave performances, it was eventually relegated to the corners of the museum and forgotten about until 5 July 1854, when
11610-540: The challenge was the Automaton Chess-player, known in modern times as the Turk. The machine consisted of a life-sized model of a human head and torso, with a black beard and grey eyes, and dressed in Ottoman robes and a turban —"the traditional costume", according to journalist and author Tom Standage , "of an oriental sorcerer ". Its left arm held a long Ottoman smoking pipe while at rest, while its right lay on
11745-421: The chess board. The bottom of the chessboard had corresponding numbers, 1–64, allowing the operator to see which places on the board were affected by a player's move. The internal magnets were positioned in a way that outside magnetic forces did not influence them, and Kempelen would often allow a large magnet to sit at the side of the board in an attempt to show that the machine was not influenced by magnetism. As
11880-527: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with
12015-452: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in
12150-419: The doors and drawers of the cabinet, allowing members of the audience to inspect the machine. Following this display, Kempelen would announce that the machine was ready for a challenger. Kempelen would inform the player that the Turk would use the white pieces and have the first move (note that the convention that White moves first was not yet established, so these were not redundant statements). Between moves
12285-507: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of
12420-402: The entreaties of his friends, and a crowd of curious persons from all countries, the satisfaction of seeing this far-famed machine". In the decade following its debut at Schönbrunn Palace the Turk only played one opponent, Sir Robert Murray Keith , a Scottish noble, and Kempelen went as far as dismantling the Turk entirely following the match. Kempelen was quoted as referring to the invention as
12555-507: The games played during its demonstrations around Europe and the Americas for nearly 84 years, playing and defeating many challengers including statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin . The device was later purchased in 1804 and exhibited by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel . The chessmasters who secretly operated it included Johann Allgaier , Boncourt , Aaron Alexandre , William Lewis , Jacques Mouret , and William Schlumberger , but
12690-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,
12825-474: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of
12960-403: The inside and outside of the cabinet. A rod could rotate the discs to the desired number, which acted as a code between the two. The Turk made its debut in 1770 at Schönbrunn Palace , about six months after Pelletier's act. Kempelen addressed the court, presenting what he had built, and began the demonstration of the machine and its parts. With every showing of the Turk, Kempelen began by opening
13095-500: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Johann Nepomuk M%C3%A4lzel Maelzel was born in Regensburg . The son of an organ builder, he received a comprehensive musical education. He moved to Vienna in 1792. After several years of study and experiment, he produced an orchestrion instrument, which
13230-406: The left side of the machine nor the drawer that housed the chess set extended fully to the rear of the cabinet; they instead went only one third of the way. A sliding seat was also installed, allowing the operator inside to slide from place to place and thus evade observation as the presenter opened various doors. The sliding of the seat caused dummy machinery to slide into its place to further conceal
13365-485: The machine "by giving the Queen the move of a Knight, but my mechanic opponent was not to be so imposed upon; he took up my Queen and replaced her in the square from which I had moved her". Kempelen made it a point to traverse the room during the match, and invited observers to bring magnets, irons, and lodestones to the cabinet to test whether the machine was run by a form of magnetism or weights. The first person to play against
13500-448: The machine stayed dormant at Schönbrunn Palace for over two decades, although Kempelen attempted unsuccessfully to sell it in his final years. Kempelen died at the age of 70 on 26 March 1804. Following the death of Kempelen, the Turk remained unexhibited until 1805 when Kempelen's son decided to sell it to Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, a Bavarian musician with an interest in various machines and devices. Mälzel, whose successes included patenting
13635-479: The machine was very complicated and designed to mislead those who observed it. When opened on the left, the front doors of the cabinet exposed a number of gears and cogs similar to clockwork . The section was designed so that if the back doors of the cabinet were open at the same time one could see through the machine. The other side of the cabinet did not house machinery; instead it contained a red cushion and some removable parts, as well as brass structures. This area
13770-526: The machine, playing the machine at a later time, playing one match with a magnet on the board, and playing a match with a shawl around the head and body of the Turk in an attempt to obscure its vision. In 1811, Mälzel brought the Turk to Milan for a performance with Eugène de Beauharnais , the Prince of Venice and Viceroy of Italy. Beauharnais enjoyed the machine so much that he offered to purchase it from Mälzel. After some serious bargaining, Beauharnais acquired
13905-523: The matches played with this handicap. Despite the handicap, the Turk (operated by Mouret at the time) ended up with forty-five victories, three losses, and two stalemates . The appearances of the Turk were profitable for Mälzel, and he continued by taking it and his other machines to the United States. In 1826, he opened an exhibition in New York City that slowly grew in popularity, giving rise to many newspaper stories and anonymous threats of exposure of
14040-401: The mechanism appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent, as well as perform the knight's tour , a puzzle that requires the player to move a knight to occupy every square of a chessboard exactly once. The Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master hiding inside to operate the machine. With a skilled operator, the Turk won most of
14175-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted
14310-630: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from
14445-446: The operator sat inside the cabinet. In Henry A. Davidson's 1945 publication A Short History of Chess , significant weight is given to Poe's essay which erroneously suggested that the player sat inside the Turk figure, rather than on a moving seat inside the cabinet. A similar error would occur in Alex G. Bell's 1978 book The Machine Plays Chess , which falsely asserted that "the operator was
14580-516: The operators within the mechanism during Kempelen's original tour remain unknown. Kempelen was inspired to build the Turk following his attendance at the court of Maria Theresa of Austria at Schönbrunn Palace , where François Pelletier was performing an illusion act. An exchange afterward resulted in Kempelen promising to return to the Palace with an invention that would top the illusions. The result of
14715-415: The person inside the cabinet. The chessboard on the top of the cabinet was thin enough to allow for a magnetic linkage. Each piece in the chess set had a small, strong magnet attached to its base, and when they were placed on the board the pieces would attract a magnet attached to a string under their specific places on the board. This allowed the operator inside the machine to see which pieces moved where on
14850-411: The piece from the board entirely and taking its turn. Napoleon then attempted the move a third time, the Turk responding with a sweep of its arm, knocking all the pieces off the board. Napoleon was reportedly amused, and then played a real game with the machine, completing nineteen moves before tipping over his king in surrender. Alternate versions of the story include Napoleon being unhappy about losing to
14985-403: The player to move a knight around a chessboard, touching each square once along the way. While most experienced chess players of the time still struggled with the puzzle, the Turk was capable of completing the tour without any difficulty from any starting point via a pegboard used by the operator with a mapping of the puzzle laid out. The Turk also had the ability to converse with spectators using
15120-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation
15255-474: The repurchase, Mälzel brought the Turk back to Paris, where he made acquaintances of many of the leading chess players at Café de la Régence. Mälzel stayed in France with the machine until 1818, when he moved to London and held a number of performances with the Turk and many of his other machines. In London, Mälzel and his act received a large amount of press, and he continued improving the machine, ultimately installing
15390-547: The rest of his life, keeping a copy of Philip Thicknesse 's book The Speaking Figure and the Automaton Chess Player, Exposed and Detected in his personal library. Following his tour of Paris, Kempelen moved the Turk to London , where it was exhibited daily for five shillings . Thicknesse, known in his time as a skeptic , sought out the Turk in an attempt to expose the inner workings of the machine. While he respected Kempelen as "a very ingenious man", he asserted that
15525-481: The secret. Mälzel's problem was finding a proper operator for the machine, having trained an unknown woman in France before coming to the United States. He ended up recalling a former operator, William Schlumberger , from Alsace in Europe to come to America and work for him again once Mälzel was able to provide the money for Schlumberger's transport. Upon Schlumberger's arrival, the Turk debuted in Boston , Mälzel spinning
15660-448: The secret: a candle inside the cabinet, necessary to provide light for the operator. A series of tubes led from the lamp to the turban of the Turk for ventilation. The smoke rising from the turban would be disguised by the smoke coming from the other candelabra in the area where the game was played. Later in 1859, an uncredited article appeared in Littell's Living Age that purported to be
15795-425: The start of the match. The details of the match have been published over the years in numerous accounts, many of them contradictory. According to Bradley Ewart, it is believed that the Turk sat at its cabinet, and Napoleon sat at a separate chess table. Napoleon's table was in a roped-off area and he was not allowed to cross into the Turk's area, with Mälzel crossing back and forth to make each player's move and allowing
15930-541: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,
16065-445: The story of the Turk from French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin . This was rife with errors ranging from dates of events to a story of a Polish officer whose legs were amputated, but ended up being rescued by Kempelen and smuggled back to Russia inside the machine. A new article about the Turk did not turn up until 1899, when The American Chess Magazine published an account of the Turk's match with Napoleon Bonaparte. The story
16200-434: The tales she had been told in her youth ... went and hid herself in a window seat, as distant as she could from the evil spirit, which she firmly believed possessed the machine." The interior also contained a pegboard chess board connected to a pantograph -style series of levers that controlled the model's left arm. The metal pointer on the pantograph moved over the interior chessboard, and would simultaneously move
16335-496: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in
16470-399: The top of a large cabinet that measured about 3.5 feet (110 cm) long, 2 feet (61 cm) wide, and 2.5 feet (76 cm) high. Placed on the top of the cabinet was a chessboard, which measured 18 inches (460 mm) on each side. The front of the cabinet consisted of three doors, an opening, and a drawer, which could be opened to reveal a red and white ivory chess set. The interior of
16605-543: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during
16740-579: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching
16875-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of
17010-450: Was also designed to provide a clear line of vision through the machine. Underneath the robes of the Ottoman model, two other doors were hidden. These also exposed clockwork machinery and provided a similarly unobstructed view through the machine. The design allowed the presenter of the machine to open every available door to the public, to maintain the illusion. Neither the clockwork visible to
17145-530: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially
17280-465: Was basically a review of previous accounts, and a substantive published account would not appear until 1947, when Chess Review published articles by Kenneth Harkness and Jack Straley Battell that amounted to a comprehensive history and description of the Turk, complete with new diagrams that synthesized information from previous publications. Another article written in 1960 for American Heritage by Ernest Wittenberg provided new diagrams describing how
17415-485: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which
17550-481: Was ever kept as the Turk's has been. Guessed at, in part, many times, no one of the several explanations ... ever solved this amusing puzzle". As the Turk was lost to fire at the time of this publication, Silas Mitchell felt that there were "no longer any reasons for concealing from the amateurs of chess, the solution to this ancient enigma". The most important biographical history about the Chess-player and Mälzel
17685-719: Was presented in The Book of the First American Chess Congress , published by Daniel Willard Fiske in 1857. The account, "The Automaton Chess-Player in America", was written by Professor George Allen of Philadelphia, in the form of a letter to William Lewis, one of the former operators of the chess automaton. In 1859, a letter published in the Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch by William F. Kummer, who worked as an operator under John Mitchell, revealed another piece of
17820-478: Was publicly exhibited, and afterward sold for 3,000 florins . In 1804, he invented the panharmonicon , an automaton able to play the musical instruments of a military band , powered by bellows and directed by revolving cylinders storing the notes. This attracted universal attention; the inventor became noted throughout Europe, was appointed imperial court-mechanician at Vienna, and drew the admiration of Ludwig van Beethoven and other noted composers. This instrument
17955-493: Was sold to a Parisian admirer for 120,000 francs. In 1805 Maelzel purchased Wolfgang von Kempelen 's half-forgotten automaton chess player, The Turk , took it to Paris, and sold it to Eugene Beauharnais at a large profit. Returning to Vienna, he gave his attention to the construction of an automaton trumpeter, which, with lifelike movements and sudden changes of attire, performed French and Austrian field signals and military airs. In 1808 he invented an improved ear trumpet , and
18090-416: Was the first true chess-playing automaton, and a precursor of sorts to Deep Blue . The Turk was visited in London by Rev. Edmund Cartwright in 1784. He was so intrigued by the Turk that he would later question whether "it is more difficult to construct a machine that shall weave than one which shall make all the variety of moves required in that complicated game". Cartwright would patent the prototype for
18225-478: Was used as a personification of Deep Blue in the 2003 documentary Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine . Owing to the Turk's popularity and mystery, its construction inspired a number of inventions and imitations, including Ajeeb , or "The Egyptian", an American imitation built by Charles Hopper that President Grover Cleveland played in 1885, and Mephisto , the self-described "most famous" machine, of which little
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