Archivum Lithuanicum

During the preparation of the publications of the edicts of the Prussian authorities for the website of the Database of Old Lithuanian Writings of the Lithuanian Language Institute, the only currently known copy of the Prussian government’s edict forbidding the burning of fences in winter, issued by the Prussian authorities on 9 August, 1724, was discovered in the Library of the University of Leipzig (UBL : 01E-2015-25). Two copies of the German edict from which it was translated were found in the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences (LMAVB : E-343). Up until now, the 1878 transcript of the Lithuanian edict, prepared and published by Hugo Weber on the basis of a copy owned by August Leskien and lost during World War II , has been used. The supplement to the article presents transcripts and photographs of the edicts and a word index. Documents from the Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin show that Christophor Heinrich Wegner (1685–1731), a priest of the Lithuanian church in Königsberg, worked as a translator of the edicts into Lithuanian between 1721 and 1731. A comparison of the language and orthography of the published edict with other edicts of the early eighteenth century revealed features common to all texts of Lithuania Minor and specific only to the period of Wegner’s translation work. The linguistic elements of this edict that are typical of the edicts printed during Wegner’s translation period are the adverb ik čiolei ‘until now’. The preposition with [č] <cz> occurs only in the edicts attributed to Wegner. The conjunction ydant ‘so that’ written with <y> is found in other texts, albeit rarely, and the genitive forms menesės ‘of the month’, rugpjutės ‘of August’ are also the most abundant in Wegner’s translation period. According to the currently available data, the chronological distribution of the Germanised Slavism štonas ‘state, condition’ is limited to the years 1721–1723.