Foreword

In June 2007 it will be 25 years since Professor Dr. Linus Brunner's deciphering of the first Raetic inscriptions were published. The 3rd of December 2007 is also the 20est anniversary of Professor Brunner's death. Since I worked together many years most closely with Professor Brunner and administer his unpublished works since his death, the present book owes so much to my unforgettable friend and teacher that he steps now posthumously another time before the public. For this publication I have scrutinized and used all published and unpublished manuscripts, Professor Brunner's extensive card index of Raetic place names, his letters to me as well as his handwritten notes in the secondary literature that the used and his comments to photographs and maps.

Much happened in the past twenty years in the Research of Raetic. Our book "Die Rätische Sprache enträtselt: Sprache und Sprachgeschichte der Räter" ("The Riddle of the Raetic Language Solved: Language and History of Language of the Raeti"), St. Gallen 1987, that was written between 1983 and 1985 and was ready for publication already in 1985, but could be published only a few months before Professor Brunner's death in 1987 because of financial problems of the government of the Canton of St. Gallen (Switzerland), caused a many years long turmoil that neither Professor Brunner nor I had awaited. While our colleagues from linguistics attacked our attempt partly through silence (that does not belong to Max Bense's "Principle of Research"), but mostly with open and heavy aggression (that does not belong either to Bense's principle), we found huge appreciation from historians, archeologists and ethnologists - and, last but by no means least, from the interested public. The book that was printed in only 1100 copies - because the printer, too, did not await such a success - was out of print in a few weeks, and many people wrote us letters asking for copies, so that we used up almost all of our personal copies.

The discussions about the Semitic Raeti that were caused by our common book did not cease for many years, whereby I had to take the place of my irreplaceable friend. As a climax I only mention the "First Raetic Congress" that took place in October 1999 in the Hotel Castell above Zuoz in the Upper Engadine Valley (Canton of Grisons, Switzerland). My lectures there, all of them based on Professor Brunner's work, occupied the national as well as the international newspaper press like already in 1983 and 1987 and in the years between and after during weeks.

Yet not only we ourselves got public persons through our "Blue Book" (so called, since its cover was in dark blue), but also the international Raetic research that had rested peacefully for decades before 1987, awoke immediately. Already in October 1989, a symposium under the misleading title "Etrusker nördlich von Etrurien" ("Etruscans in the North of Etruria") under the chair of the Viennese etruscologist Luciana Aigner- Foresti took place in the Castle Neuwaldegg near Vienna. In the spring of 1990, Stefan Schumacher got his M.A. degree with his work "Die rätischen Inschriften" ("The Raetic Inscriptions"). In 1991, Paul Gleirscher presented his booklet "Die Räter" ("The Raeti"), in 1992, he co-edited together with Ingrid Metzger the bilingual volume "Die Räter - I Reti" that collected non-linguistic "etruscological" contributions to the Raetic "problem" (including a third impression of the old linguistic article by Ernst Risch from 1971 that had been reprinted already in 1984), and 1993/94, Gleirscher dedicated to the Swiss journal "Helvetia Archaeologica", that hitherto only published Professor Brunner's contributions to Raetic, a double number that contained mainly Gleirscher's own and Schumacher's "etruscological" works.

All these works have in common that they are non-linguistic. Also Schumacher's M.A. thesis that appeared as a book in 1992 (second enlarged edition 2004) is purely epigraphic. The other contributions are all historical and archeological. Our Semitic theory was either not mentioned, or false assertions were made by the authors named. For example Schumacher calls in his book (1992, p. 94) the University professor Brunner a "Privatgelehrter" (a private/independent scholar). According to Schumacher' own words (2004, p. 93, note 170), his work was enabled through a scholarship from the estate of Manfred Lichtenthal that was arranged by Lichtenthal's daughter. As it is commonly known amongst "Raetologists", the same Lichtenthal, after having read Professor Brunner's publications, published in the "Bündner Monatsblatt" (a regional folkloristic quarterly from the Grisons) three articles in which he tried to prove that Raetic is Western Semitic, more exactly identical with biblical Hebrew and Ugaritic. Really interesting Schumacher's confession about his scholarship gets therefore, because he wanted to disprove the Semitic origin of Raetic with Lichtenthal's money, and really unscientific his confession gets, when he does not even cite Lichtenthal in his book. Furthermore, Lichtenthal, who really was a "private scholar" is of course not mentioned in Schumacher's chapter about "independent scholars", were the name of Professor Brunner is purposely mistakenly mentioned.

The present book, quoted from now on as "Toth and Brunner (2007)", presents a completely revised, corrected, enlarged and rewritten version of "Brunner and Toth (1987)" and summarizes all new results of the past twenty years. May this book cause the same earthquake-like reactions like his predecessor did!

Tucson, AZ (USA), November 2006

Prof. Dr. Alfred Toth
Prof. Dr. Linus Brunner