Elena N. Tsvetaeva

Why everyone is the Smith of their own happiness: The origin of one german proverb

The article looks into the etymology of the German proverb Jeder ist seines Glückes Schmied (Every man is the smith of his own happiness = Every man is the architect of his own fortune). The analysis of the proverb is linked to Keller’s “Der Schmied seines Glückes”, where the phraseological unit in question is applied to the author’s text in reverse order – from a vague concept to a concrete meaning – thus, acting as a means of text organization and revealing the idea that the protagonist found his happiness in making nails.
The undertaken linguistic study is based on the etymologization of the nominal components, a comparative historical and structural semantic analysis of the proverb as well as phrases semantically related to it.
The analysis brings to the surface the fact that the phraseological unit is motivated by its mythological background. Historically, the lexical unit Schmied (Smith) acquired a special meaning, whereas within the phraseological unit it actualizes the original idea of “creator, master”. It is through historical and etymological study that this semantic motive becomes obvious, thus explaining the ability of the word Schmied to coexist with the semantically related word Glück within one proverb.
 

The article looks further into the history of the idiom “zwischen zwei Feuer” and attempts to shed light on etymological processes the idiom has undergone. Known both in German and other European languages, the idiom is however of quite obscure origin, which is exemplified by Russian and German phraseology. Being historical, the study relies on structural-semantic, cultural and comparative analysis of idiomatic variants (including historic variants). A comparative lingua-cultural analysis of the universal Indo-European mythologem ‘fire’ reveals the importance of mythical worldview in the development of phraseological systems.