Die Philologen und die Korkindustrie in der Provinz Girona: von der Methode «Wörter und Sachen» zur modernen Landeskunde

Abstract

In 1914, Rainer Marx published his doctoral dissertation on “The Catalan terminology of the manufacture of corks and cork”. His study, which represents a good example of the philological method "words and things" (Wörter und Sachen), coincided with the Catalan movement of scientific hiking and fieldwork and competitions to collect technical vocabularies encouraged by lexicographers such as Alcover and Griera. In this article, we examine the discrepancies between Marx's description of the cork industry at the turn of the century and that of other publications. We mention the traditional steps ranging from peeling trees to packing finished caps, and we illustrate the history of the ups and downs of the cork guild. A series of historical photographs and engravings, preserved in the new Cork Museum in Palafrugell, illustrate this study.