Der Ortsname Merseburg und sein Geheimnis

Abstract

The toponym Merseburg and its mystery. ‒ The article is focused on the history of the local name Merseburg, the name of a town at the river Saale in Eastern Germany. Because this river was a borderline between Germanic and Slavonic tribes the possibilities of Slavic origin are discussed and finally negated. The historical forms documented since more than thousand years allow the reconstruction of an already Germanic or Old Low German name *Marsiburg and later Mersiburg with the meaning ‘high and secure place’. This new proposal is founded on facts from the history of the German language and dialectology.