Several Thousand Words of German Copied into Coleridge's 1799 Notebook

This is ‘Notebook 3’ which, as Coburn speculates, was probably bought in Germany and which is about one-third full of German-related jottings, including this very lengthy passage of German prose—I'd estimate about 4000 words—printed in the Bollingen edition over several entries: 1:434-439. It's all copied out in what Coburn calls ‘a German hand’ (not Coleridge's) and the first three chunks of this new hand relate to the topography of the Harz region, in which is located the Brocken, which Coleridge visited. Entry 434 begins ‘Alle Gebürge des Harzes, die meistens Ganggebürge sind, werden durch einen hohen vom kleinen Brocken herab, gegen Abend ziehenden Bergrücken, den Bruchberg, fast nach einem rechten Winkel mit der Mittagslinie, in zwey ziemlich gleiche Theile abgesondert ...’ (‘All the mountains of the Harz, most of which are iron-ore mountains, are divided into two roughly equal parts by a fairly high mountain ridge, the Bruchbergh, which runs westwards down from the little Brocken almost at right angles to the meridian ...’) and continues to discuss the landscape and the susceptibility of the forests of the Harz to dry-rot. Two further entries prefer (438) direct to indirect religious revelation and discuss (439) the potential of new processes for deriving sugar from beet. With respect to this material Coburn notes: ‘the source has not been found’ although she does record that she has searched—one can almost smell her weary frustration—through long runs of the Jahrbücher der Preussischen Monarchie, the Denkwürdigkeiten der Mark Brandenburg ‘and other journals’. From this she concludes that ‘in the spring of 1799 a controversy was raging on the “important new discovery” of the sugar beet.’ Beet, it seems, was it. They told her don't you ever come around here/don't want to see your face, you better disappear. The feuer's in their eyes and their Wörter are really clear, so ...

Not to get distracted. It turns out that 435, 436 and 437 are from Christoph Wilhelm Jakob Gatterers' guidebook to the Harz region, Anleitung den Harz und andere Bergwerke mit Nuzen zu bereisen (2 vols 1786) 2:106f.

The text itself, or the start of it, is screenshotted at the head of this post.

1:437, beginning ‘Der Verf. will von mittelbarer Offenbarung nichts wissen und glaubt, was uns nicht so scheint, daß man diese nur darum angenommen habe ...’ (‘The author will have no truck wth indirect revelation and believes, though it is a belief we do not share, that it has been accepted because certain objections against direct revelation could not be answered ...’) is from Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, Volume 1 (1799) 1:823 [dated 25th March 1799]

Finally 1:438, the entry on sugar-beet, beginning ‘Der Anbau der Runkel-Rüben, Beta vulgaris Linn. oder nach Beckmann Beta altessima, und daß solche gewöhnlich ...’ (‘The manner of cultivating sugar-beet, Beta vulgaris Linn, or according to Beckmann Beta altessima, is well-known ...’) is from the Salzburger Intelligenzblatt for the 15th June 1799.

So there you have it.