WOLFGANG MIEDER
"... as if I were the master of the situation"
Proverbial Manipulation in Adolf Hitler's Mein
Kampf
For Alan Dundes on His Sixtieth Birthday
While there is no dearth of scholarly studies on the
language use in Nazi Germany,[1] recent investigators have pointed out that such analyses
should not only look at the language of National
Socialism, but also at the German language as it was used
throughout the country during the years of the Nazi
regime.[2] Two early documents
from that time clearly illustrate the latter desideratum. In
his satirical work Die dritte Walpurgisnacht (1933),
the Austrian cultural critic Karl Kraus exposes and attacks
the rising National Socialism by way of its slogans,
phrases, and proverbial expressions. He points out that this
"politische Phrasenvernebelung" (political smoke-screen of
phrases) had a marked influence on the general German
population right from the start which, however, for the most
part did not become aware of "what reality lies hidden
behind such expressions".[3] Varying the German proverb "Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag"
(The sun will bring it to light), Kraus writes that "Die
Sprache [i.e., language] bringt es an den
Tag".[4] This altered proverb
is also cited several times in the autobiographical yet
scholarly book entitled L[ingua] T[ertii]
I[mperii]: Notizbuch eines Philologen (1947) by
the Holocaust survivor Victor Klemperer[5] in order to point to the thoughtless and immoral language
used during the Third Reich. And there is also the
courageous essay with the Biblical-proverbial title of "An
ihrer Sprache sollt Ihr sie erkennen: Die Gleichschaltung
[i.e.; political coordination] der deutschen
Sprache" (1938), in which Hans Jacob talks about the
spreading "Vergewaltigung des Sprachgeistes" (rape of the
spirit of the language) in Nazi Germany.[6] The title is a parody of the Bible proverb "An ihren
Früchten sollt ihr sie erkennen" (Matth. 7:16; Ye shall
know them by their fruits), and the article itself explains
that German citizens should pay attention to the language of
Hitler and his followers in order to comprehend their evil
designs. Hitler actually used this very proverb on March 23,
1933, in a sarcastic speech against the Social Democrats.
There he adds that "the fruits testify against
them"[7] to the prophetic
proverb, but little did Hitler know that it would be the
fruits of his words and deeds that would in due time
incriminate himself and his loyal Nazis.
Obviously the National Socialists had their special
vocabulary which underpinned their political program with a
pronounced rhetorical and propagandistic style. Detailed
studies by Cornelia Berning, Werner Betz, Siegfried Bork,
Rolf Glunk, Heinz Paechter, Wolfgang Sauer, Eugen Seidel and
Ingeborg Seidel-Slotty, etc. have shown this in much
detail,[8] but it must not be
forgotten that the Nazis also made considerable use of all
aspects of folk speech. At a party convention in 1934 Joseph
Goebbels called directly for the use of such language: "We
must speak the language which the folk understands. Whoever
wants to speak to the folk must, as Luther says, pay heed to
folk speech".[9]
Hitler actually had already said something quite similar
in 1925/26 in Mein Kampf: "I must not measure the
speech of a statesman to his people by the impression which
it leaves in a university professor, but by the effect it
exerts on the people" (477).[10] What Hitler claims to be of specific importance to a speaker
addressing the common folk is of equal significance for the
language of propaganda which he analyzes in various sections
of his book: "All propaganda must be popular and its
intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited
intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently,
the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its
purely intellectual level will have to be" (180).[11]
The full text of this
article is published in De
Proverbio - Issue
1:1995, an
electronic book, available from amazon.com and other leading Internet booksellers.
Finally, of special interest is also the title of a short
chapter (see pp. 508-517) for which Hitler cites a
"geflügeltes Wort" (winged word or sententious remark)
from Friedrich Schiller's drama Wilhelm Tell, namely
"Der Starke ist am mächtigsten allein"[74] (The Strong Man Is Mightiest Alone; 508). One would assume
that Hitler would then write about his own early rise to the
leadership of the National Socialists. This is, however, not
at all the case, because in this chapter Hitler wants to
show how the National Socialist Party was able to bring the
so-called "folkish splintering" (see pp. 512-514) under
control in Germany. And yet, Kenneth Burke is absolutely
correct when in his analysis of Mein Kampf he
observes that throughout this chapter one senses "a
spontaneous identification between leader and
people".[75] In his speech of
March 20, 1936, Hitler explained this identity of
"Führer" and National Socialists in the following
manner: "From the people I have grown, among the people I
have stayed, to the people I return!"[76] A second "proverbial" quotation from Schiller's Wilhelm
Tell - one that has become quite popular in recent years
because of its use as a slogan during the process of German
reunification - also appears in Mein Kampf as "Wir
sind ein einig Volk von Brüdern"[77] (We are a united people of brothers; 482). But Hitler warns
his readers and later his listeners that in his German
utopia only the Aryan race can be counted among these
privileged people and that he as the only "Führer" will
brutally exclude (later exterminate) all outsiders: "It
must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in
this world has ever been achieved by coalitions
[...]. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a
spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable
except as titanic struggles [...]. And thus the
folkish state above all will be created [...] solely
by the iron will of a single movement that has fought its
way to the top against all" (516-517). The quotation
turned proverb "Der Starke ist am mächtigsten allein"
thus becomes a metaphor for the grotesque behavior of
Germany under the absolute leadership of Adolf Hitler.
It will not surprise anyone that towards the end of Mein Kampf Hitler employs proverbial metaphors that
stem from the language of seafaring. Politicians have long
referred to the ship of state and its captain.[78] Twice Hitler speaks of the "Ruhe vor dem Sturme" (calm
before the storm; see pp. 158 and 194) and concludes the
second to the last chapter with the oppositional pair of
proverbial expressions "mit dem (gegen den) Strom schwimmen"
(to swim with [against] the current) as well as the
phrase "einen Damm aufrichten" (to erect a dam":
Today, it is true, we must brace ourselves
against the current of a public opinion confounded by
Jewish guile exploiting German gullibility; sometimes, it
is true, the waves break harshly and angrily about us,
but he who swims with the current is more easily
overlooked than he who bucks the waves. Today we are a
reef; in a few years Fate may raise us up as a dam
against which the general current will break, and flow
into a new bed (666-667).
In the last chapter with its bellicose title "The Right
of Emergency Defense" (see pp. 668-687) Hitler employs quite
consciously the topos of the ship's pilot. Doubtlessly in
1926 he was already thinking of steering the German ship of
state in due time on a new course of National Socialism:
We might hope [...] at long last to do
what would have to be done in the end anyway, "das Steuer
des Reichsschiffes herumzureißen" (to pull the helm
of the Reich ship about) on some particularly crass
occasion, and ram the enemy. This, to be sure, meant a
"Kampf auf Leben und Tod" (life-and-death struggle)
(673-674).
Here we have the pilot or "Führer" in his proverbial
struggle for life or death. Hitler envisioned himself as
this captain throughout Mein Kampf, and this struggle
became a leitmotif for his entire existence in his later
years. That he actually would bring death to millions of
people he probably did not yet imagine in the middle of the
1920s. Or did he? At the time of composing Mein
Kampf, he wrote with fanatical confidence that his
National Socialist movement would be victorious in Germany.
With about 500 proverbs and proverbial expressions on 782
pages of the German edition of Mein Kampf, Hitler
reaches the high frequency of one proverbial utterance for
every page and a half. This is indeed a clear indication
that he has made ample use of metaphorical folk speech to
underpin his program of National Socialism. In his
"philosophical" and rhetorical fanaticism, it was obvious to
him that his struggle would eventually make him the
indisputable "Führer" of Germany. In this drive to
absolute power, he shows a definite preference for the
proverbial expression "Herr der Lage sein" (to be master of
the situation), as was already mentioned at the beginning of
this discussion. It is appropriate, therefore, to close
these comments with yet another reference to this phrase in
which Hitler describes one of his early speeches at a
National Socialist meeting. This short passage shows his
complex character and his pathological struggle to become
the "Führer". It should, however, be noted that at this
early time he uses the still unfulfilled proverbial
subjunctive:
"After about an hour and a half - I was able to
talk that long despite interruptions - it seemed almost
'als ob ich Herr der Lage würde' (as if I were going
to be master of the situation)" (505).
If only he had never become this master, who
"marched straight to destruction, drawing the dear people
behind like the Pied Piper of Hamelin" (149).[79] Even this last quotation out of Mein Kampf can once
again today be read as an ironic and prophetic statement by
the proverbially bankrupt Adolf Hitler.
Notes:
1 See
Michael Kinne, "Zum Sprachgebrauch der deutschen Faschisten:
Ein bibliographischer Überblick," Diskussion
Deutsch, 14 (1983), 518-521.
2 See Utz
Maas, "Sprache im Nationalsozialismus," Diskussion
Deutsch, 14 (1983), 499-517; ibid., Als der Geist der
Gemeinschaft eine Sprache fand: Sprache im
Nationalsozialismus. Versuch einer historischen
Argumentationsanalyse (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag,
1984); and Carola Sachse, Tilla Siegel, Hasso Spode, and
Wolfgang Spohn, Angst, Belohnung, Zucht und Ordnung.
Herrschaftsmechanismen im Nationalsozialismus (Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 1982).
3 See Karl
Kraus, Die dritte Walpurgisnacht, ed. by Heinrich
Fischer (München: Kösel, 1952), p. 208 and p. 211.
It should be noted here that the translations of all
secondary literature is my own. For additional comments
concerning the use of proverbial texts during this period
see Wolfgang Mieder, "Karl Kraus und der
sprichwörtliche Aphorismus," Muttersprache, 89
(1979), 97-115; also in W. Mieder, Deutsche
Sprichwörter in Literatur, Politik, Presse und
Werbung (Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 1983), pp. 113-131. O
interest is also Andrea Hoffend, "Bevor die Nazis die
Sprache beim Wort nahmen: Wurzeln und Entsprechungen
nationalsozialistischen Sprachgebrauchs," Muttersprache, 97 (1987), 257-299.
4 Kraus, p.
241.
5 See Victor
Klemperer, LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen (Köln: Röderberg, 1987; 1st ed. 1947), p. 16 and
pp. 166-167.
6 Hans
Jacob, "An ihrer Sprache sollt Ihr sie erkennen: Die
Gleichschaltung der deutschen Sprache," Das Wort, 1
(1938), 81-86. The Bible proverb is used as a powerful
leitmotif throughout this article, and at the very end it is
cited with an imperative exclamation mark, trying to
activate the German population to deal critically with the
language and deeds of the growing number of National
Socialists.
7 All
quotations out of Hitler's speeches are cited from the
standard edition by Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und
Proklamationen 1932-1945, 2 vols (Neustadt a. d. Aisch:
Schmidt, 1962-1963), vol. 1, p. 244. All the translations
into English are my own.
8 See
Cornelia Berning, Vom Abstammungsnachweis zum Zuchtwort:
Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1964); Werner Betz, "The National-Socialist
Vocabulary," in The Third Reich, ed. by Maurice
Baumont, John Fried and Edmond Vermeil (New York: Frederick
Praeger, 1955), pp. 784-796; Siegfried Bork, Mißbrauch der Sprache: Tendenzen
nationalsozialistischer Sprachregelung (München:
Francke, 1970); Rolf Glunk, "Erfolg und Mißerfolg der
nationalsozialistischen Sprachlenkung," Zeitschrift
für deutsche Sprache, 22 (1966), 57-73 and 146-153;
23 (1967), 83-113 and 178-188; 24 (1968), 72-91 and 184-191;
26 (1970), 84-97 and 176-183; and 27 (1971), 113-123 and
177-187; Heinz Paechter, Nazi-Deutsch: A Glossary of
Contemporary German (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1944);
Wolfgang Sauer, Der Sprachgebrauch von
Nationalsozialisten vor 1933 (Hamburg: Helmut Buske,
1978); and Eugen Seidel and Ingeborg Seidel-Slotty, Sprachwandel im Dritten Reich (Halle: Verlag Sprache
und Literatur, 1961).
9 Quoted
from Cornelia Berning, "Die Sprache der
Nationalsozialisten," Zeitschrift für deutsche
Wortforschung, 18 (1962), 109. Berning's long article
contains more explanatory information than her book cited in
note 8 above; it can be found in the following volumes of
this journal: 16 (1960), 71-149 and 178-188; 17 (1961),
83-121 and 171-182; 18 (1962), 108-118 and 160-172; 19
(1963), 92-112. Klemperer (see note 5), p. 246, also quotes
this statement by Goebbels.
10 All
numbers in parentheses refer to the following edition of the
English translation of Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
[Sentry Edition], 1962; 1st ed. 1947). Please note
here and in other quotations from this book the use of
italics in order to render Hitler's affinity to the use of
spaced type. I thank my friend Prof. George B. Bryan for
lending me his copy of this book and for helping me with the
translation of some of the proverbial language which Ralph
Manheim failed to render into equivalent English. Thanks is
also due my friend Veronica Richel for her help with some of
the translations of proverbs and quotations. The English
citations are all from this book, but where necessary I
attempted a more colloquial translation of the German
proverbial language. Reading Mein Kampf in the German
original indicates Hitler's frequent use of proverbial
language much better than this otherwise excellent
translation.
11 Compare
also this additional irreverent statement by Hitler: "The
receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their
intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is
enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective
propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must
harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public
understands what you want him to understand by your slogan"
(180-181). See also Walther Dieckmann, "Zum Wörterbuch
des Unmenschen: Propaganda," Zeitschrift für
deutsche Sprache, 21 (1965), 105-114.
The full text of this
article is published in De
Proverbio - Issue
1:1995, an
electronic book, available from amazon.com and other leading Internet booksellers.
77 Schiller
actually writes "Wir sind ein Volk und einig wollen wir
handeln" (We are one people and united we want to act". For
the more modern use of this quotation turned proverb see
Ulla Fix, "Der Wandel der Muster - Der Wandel im Umgang mit
den Mustern. Kommunikationskultur im institutionellen
Sprachgebrauch der DDR am Beispiel von Losungen," Deutsche Sprache, no volume, no. 4 (1990), 332-347;
and Hans-Manfred Militz, "Das Antisprichwort als semantische
Variante eines sprichwörtlichen Textes," Proverbium, 8 (1991), 107-111.
78 For a
discussion of such proverbs and proverbial expressions see
Irene Meichsner, Die Logik von Gemeinplätzen.
Vorgeführt an Steuermannstopos und Schiffsmetapher (Bonn: Bouvier, 1983); and Wolfgang Mieder, "'Wir sitzen
alle in einem Boot': Herkunft, Geschichte und Verwendung
einer neueren deutschen Redensart," Muttersprache, 100 (1990), 18-37.
79 Hitler
speaks in this quotation of the politics of Austria and
could, of course, not surmise that he himself would become
the most terrible incarnation of the "Pied Piper of Hamelin"
motif. See also the numerous interpretations of Hitler as a
Pied Piper in modern literature and caricatures in Wolfgang
Mieder, "'The Pied Piper of Hamelin': Origin, History, and
Survival of the Legend," in W. Mieder, Tradition and
Innovation in Folk Literature (Hanover, New Hampshire:
University Press of New England, 1987), pp. 45-83 and
236-243 (notes).
Wolfgang Mieder
Department of German and Russian
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont 05405
USA
"... as if I were the master of the situation"
Proverbial Manipulation in Adolf Hitler's Mein
Kampf
For Alan Dundes on His Sixtieth Birthday
While there is no dearth of scholarly studies on the
language use in Nazi Germany,[1] recent investigators have pointed out that such analyses
should not only look at the language of National
Socialism, but also at the German language as it was used
throughout the country during the years of the Nazi
regime.[2] Two early documents
from that time clearly illustrate the latter desideratum. In
his satirical work Die dritte Walpurgisnacht (1933),
the Austrian cultural critic Karl Kraus exposes and attacks
the rising National Socialism by way of its slogans,
phrases, and proverbial expressions. He points out that this
"politische Phrasenvernebelung" (political smoke-screen of
phrases) had a marked influence on the general German
population right from the start which, however, for the most
part did not become aware of "what reality lies hidden
behind such expressions".[3] Varying the German proverb "Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag"
(The sun will bring it to light), Kraus writes that "Die
Sprache [i.e., language] bringt es an den
Tag".[4] This altered proverb
is also cited several times in the autobiographical yet
scholarly book entitled L[ingua] T[ertii]
I[mperii]: Notizbuch eines Philologen (1947) by
the Holocaust survivor Victor Klemperer[5] in order to point to the thoughtless and immoral language
used during the Third Reich. And there is also the
courageous essay with the Biblical-proverbial title of "An
ihrer Sprache sollt Ihr sie erkennen: Die Gleichschaltung
[i.e.; political coordination] der deutschen
Sprache" (1938), in which Hans Jacob talks about the
spreading "Vergewaltigung des Sprachgeistes" (rape of the
spirit of the language) in Nazi Germany.[6] The title is a parody of the Bible proverb "An ihren
Früchten sollt ihr sie erkennen" (Matth. 7:16; Ye shall
know them by their fruits), and the article itself explains
that German citizens should pay attention to the language of
Hitler and his followers in order to comprehend their evil
designs. Hitler actually used this very proverb on March 23,
1933, in a sarcastic speech against the Social Democrats.
There he adds that "the fruits testify against
them"[7] to the prophetic
proverb, but little did Hitler know that it would be the
fruits of his words and deeds that would in due time
incriminate himself and his loyal Nazis.
Obviously the National Socialists had their special
vocabulary which underpinned their political program with a
pronounced rhetorical and propagandistic style. Detailed
studies by Cornelia Berning, Werner Betz, Siegfried Bork,
Rolf Glunk, Heinz Paechter, Wolfgang Sauer, Eugen Seidel and
Ingeborg Seidel-Slotty, etc. have shown this in much
detail,[8] but it must not be
forgotten that the Nazis also made considerable use of all
aspects of folk speech. At a party convention in 1934 Joseph
Goebbels called directly for the use of such language: "We
must speak the language which the folk understands. Whoever
wants to speak to the folk must, as Luther says, pay heed to
folk speech".[9]
Hitler actually had already said something quite similar
in 1925/26 in Mein Kampf: "I must not measure the
speech of a statesman to his people by the impression which
it leaves in a university professor, but by the effect it
exerts on the people" (477).[10] What Hitler claims to be of specific importance to a speaker
addressing the common folk is of equal significance for the
language of propaganda which he analyzes in various sections
of his book: "All propaganda must be popular and its
intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited
intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently,
the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its
purely intellectual level will have to be" (180).[11]
The full text of this
article is published in De
Proverbio - Issue
1:1995, an
electronic book, available from amazon.com and other leading Internet booksellers.
Finally, of special interest is also the title of a short
chapter (see pp. 508-517) for which Hitler cites a
"geflügeltes Wort" (winged word or sententious remark)
from Friedrich Schiller's drama Wilhelm Tell, namely
"Der Starke ist am mächtigsten allein"[74] (The Strong Man Is Mightiest Alone; 508). One would assume
that Hitler would then write about his own early rise to the
leadership of the National Socialists. This is, however, not
at all the case, because in this chapter Hitler wants to
show how the National Socialist Party was able to bring the
so-called "folkish splintering" (see pp. 512-514) under
control in Germany. And yet, Kenneth Burke is absolutely
correct when in his analysis of Mein Kampf he
observes that throughout this chapter one senses "a
spontaneous identification between leader and
people".[75] In his speech of
March 20, 1936, Hitler explained this identity of
"Führer" and National Socialists in the following
manner: "From the people I have grown, among the people I
have stayed, to the people I return!"[76] A second "proverbial" quotation from Schiller's Wilhelm
Tell - one that has become quite popular in recent years
because of its use as a slogan during the process of German
reunification - also appears in Mein Kampf as "Wir
sind ein einig Volk von Brüdern"[77] (We are a united people of brothers; 482). But Hitler warns
his readers and later his listeners that in his German
utopia only the Aryan race can be counted among these
privileged people and that he as the only "Führer" will
brutally exclude (later exterminate) all outsiders: "It
must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in
this world has ever been achieved by coalitions
[...]. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a
spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable
except as titanic struggles [...]. And thus the
folkish state above all will be created [...] solely
by the iron will of a single movement that has fought its
way to the top against all" (516-517). The quotation
turned proverb "Der Starke ist am mächtigsten allein"
thus becomes a metaphor for the grotesque behavior of
Germany under the absolute leadership of Adolf Hitler.
It will not surprise anyone that towards the end of Mein Kampf Hitler employs proverbial metaphors that
stem from the language of seafaring. Politicians have long
referred to the ship of state and its captain.[78] Twice Hitler speaks of the "Ruhe vor dem Sturme" (calm
before the storm; see pp. 158 and 194) and concludes the
second to the last chapter with the oppositional pair of
proverbial expressions "mit dem (gegen den) Strom schwimmen"
(to swim with [against] the current) as well as the
phrase "einen Damm aufrichten" (to erect a dam":
Today, it is true, we must brace ourselves
against the current of a public opinion confounded by
Jewish guile exploiting German gullibility; sometimes, it
is true, the waves break harshly and angrily about us,
but he who swims with the current is more easily
overlooked than he who bucks the waves. Today we are a
reef; in a few years Fate may raise us up as a dam
against which the general current will break, and flow
into a new bed (666-667).
In the last chapter with its bellicose title "The Right
of Emergency Defense" (see pp. 668-687) Hitler employs quite
consciously the topos of the ship's pilot. Doubtlessly in
1926 he was already thinking of steering the German ship of
state in due time on a new course of National Socialism:
We might hope [...] at long last to do
what would have to be done in the end anyway, "das Steuer
des Reichsschiffes herumzureißen" (to pull the helm
of the Reich ship about) on some particularly crass
occasion, and ram the enemy. This, to be sure, meant a
"Kampf auf Leben und Tod" (life-and-death struggle)
(673-674).
Here we have the pilot or "Führer" in his proverbial
struggle for life or death. Hitler envisioned himself as
this captain throughout Mein Kampf, and this struggle
became a leitmotif for his entire existence in his later
years. That he actually would bring death to millions of
people he probably did not yet imagine in the middle of the
1920s. Or did he? At the time of composing Mein
Kampf, he wrote with fanatical confidence that his
National Socialist movement would be victorious in Germany.
With about 500 proverbs and proverbial expressions on 782
pages of the German edition of Mein Kampf, Hitler
reaches the high frequency of one proverbial utterance for
every page and a half. This is indeed a clear indication
that he has made ample use of metaphorical folk speech to
underpin his program of National Socialism. In his
"philosophical" and rhetorical fanaticism, it was obvious to
him that his struggle would eventually make him the
indisputable "Führer" of Germany. In this drive to
absolute power, he shows a definite preference for the
proverbial expression "Herr der Lage sein" (to be master of
the situation), as was already mentioned at the beginning of
this discussion. It is appropriate, therefore, to close
these comments with yet another reference to this phrase in
which Hitler describes one of his early speeches at a
National Socialist meeting. This short passage shows his
complex character and his pathological struggle to become
the "Führer". It should, however, be noted that at this
early time he uses the still unfulfilled proverbial
subjunctive:
"After about an hour and a half - I was able to
talk that long despite interruptions - it seemed almost
'als ob ich Herr der Lage würde' (as if I were going
to be master of the situation)" (505).
If only he had never become this master, who
"marched straight to destruction, drawing the dear people
behind like the Pied Piper of Hamelin" (149).[79] Even this last quotation out of Mein Kampf can once
again today be read as an ironic and prophetic statement by
the proverbially bankrupt Adolf Hitler.
Notes:
1 See
Michael Kinne, "Zum Sprachgebrauch der deutschen Faschisten:
Ein bibliographischer Überblick," Diskussion
Deutsch, 14 (1983), 518-521.
2 See Utz
Maas, "Sprache im Nationalsozialismus," Diskussion
Deutsch, 14 (1983), 499-517; ibid., Als der Geist der
Gemeinschaft eine Sprache fand: Sprache im
Nationalsozialismus. Versuch einer historischen
Argumentationsanalyse (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag,
1984); and Carola Sachse, Tilla Siegel, Hasso Spode, and
Wolfgang Spohn, Angst, Belohnung, Zucht und Ordnung.
Herrschaftsmechanismen im Nationalsozialismus (Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 1982).
3 See Karl
Kraus, Die dritte Walpurgisnacht, ed. by Heinrich
Fischer (München: Kösel, 1952), p. 208 and p. 211.
It should be noted here that the translations of all
secondary literature is my own. For additional comments
concerning the use of proverbial texts during this period
see Wolfgang Mieder, "Karl Kraus und der
sprichwörtliche Aphorismus," Muttersprache, 89
(1979), 97-115; also in W. Mieder, Deutsche
Sprichwörter in Literatur, Politik, Presse und
Werbung (Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 1983), pp. 113-131. O
interest is also Andrea Hoffend, "Bevor die Nazis die
Sprache beim Wort nahmen: Wurzeln und Entsprechungen
nationalsozialistischen Sprachgebrauchs," Muttersprache, 97 (1987), 257-299.
4 Kraus, p.
241.
5 See Victor
Klemperer, LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen (Köln: Röderberg, 1987; 1st ed. 1947), p. 16 and
pp. 166-167.
6 Hans
Jacob, "An ihrer Sprache sollt Ihr sie erkennen: Die
Gleichschaltung der deutschen Sprache," Das Wort, 1
(1938), 81-86. The Bible proverb is used as a powerful
leitmotif throughout this article, and at the very end it is
cited with an imperative exclamation mark, trying to
activate the German population to deal critically with the
language and deeds of the growing number of National
Socialists.
7 All
quotations out of Hitler's speeches are cited from the
standard edition by Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und
Proklamationen 1932-1945, 2 vols (Neustadt a. d. Aisch:
Schmidt, 1962-1963), vol. 1, p. 244. All the translations
into English are my own.
8 See
Cornelia Berning, Vom Abstammungsnachweis zum Zuchtwort:
Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1964); Werner Betz, "The National-Socialist
Vocabulary," in The Third Reich, ed. by Maurice
Baumont, John Fried and Edmond Vermeil (New York: Frederick
Praeger, 1955), pp. 784-796; Siegfried Bork, Mißbrauch der Sprache: Tendenzen
nationalsozialistischer Sprachregelung (München:
Francke, 1970); Rolf Glunk, "Erfolg und Mißerfolg der
nationalsozialistischen Sprachlenkung," Zeitschrift
für deutsche Sprache, 22 (1966), 57-73 and 146-153;
23 (1967), 83-113 and 178-188; 24 (1968), 72-91 and 184-191;
26 (1970), 84-97 and 176-183; and 27 (1971), 113-123 and
177-187; Heinz Paechter, Nazi-Deutsch: A Glossary of
Contemporary German (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1944);
Wolfgang Sauer, Der Sprachgebrauch von
Nationalsozialisten vor 1933 (Hamburg: Helmut Buske,
1978); and Eugen Seidel and Ingeborg Seidel-Slotty, Sprachwandel im Dritten Reich (Halle: Verlag Sprache
und Literatur, 1961).
9 Quoted
from Cornelia Berning, "Die Sprache der
Nationalsozialisten," Zeitschrift für deutsche
Wortforschung, 18 (1962), 109. Berning's long article
contains more explanatory information than her book cited in
note 8 above; it can be found in the following volumes of
this journal: 16 (1960), 71-149 and 178-188; 17 (1961),
83-121 and 171-182; 18 (1962), 108-118 and 160-172; 19
(1963), 92-112. Klemperer (see note 5), p. 246, also quotes
this statement by Goebbels.
10 All
numbers in parentheses refer to the following edition of the
English translation of Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
[Sentry Edition], 1962; 1st ed. 1947). Please note
here and in other quotations from this book the use of
italics in order to render Hitler's affinity to the use of
spaced type. I thank my friend Prof. George B. Bryan for
lending me his copy of this book and for helping me with the
translation of some of the proverbial language which Ralph
Manheim failed to render into equivalent English. Thanks is
also due my friend Veronica Richel for her help with some of
the translations of proverbs and quotations. The English
citations are all from this book, but where necessary I
attempted a more colloquial translation of the German
proverbial language. Reading Mein Kampf in the German
original indicates Hitler's frequent use of proverbial
language much better than this otherwise excellent
translation.
11 Compare
also this additional irreverent statement by Hitler: "The
receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their
intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is
enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective
propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must
harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public
understands what you want him to understand by your slogan"
(180-181). See also Walther Dieckmann, "Zum Wörterbuch
des Unmenschen: Propaganda," Zeitschrift für
deutsche Sprache, 21 (1965), 105-114.
The full text of this
article is published in De
Proverbio - Issue
1:1995, an
electronic book, available from amazon.com and other leading Internet booksellers.
77 Schiller
actually writes "Wir sind ein Volk und einig wollen wir
handeln" (We are one people and united we want to act". For
the more modern use of this quotation turned proverb see
Ulla Fix, "Der Wandel der Muster - Der Wandel im Umgang mit
den Mustern. Kommunikationskultur im institutionellen
Sprachgebrauch der DDR am Beispiel von Losungen," Deutsche Sprache, no volume, no. 4 (1990), 332-347;
and Hans-Manfred Militz, "Das Antisprichwort als semantische
Variante eines sprichwörtlichen Textes," Proverbium, 8 (1991), 107-111.
78 For a
discussion of such proverbs and proverbial expressions see
Irene Meichsner, Die Logik von Gemeinplätzen.
Vorgeführt an Steuermannstopos und Schiffsmetapher (Bonn: Bouvier, 1983); and Wolfgang Mieder, "'Wir sitzen
alle in einem Boot': Herkunft, Geschichte und Verwendung
einer neueren deutschen Redensart," Muttersprache, 100 (1990), 18-37.
79 Hitler
speaks in this quotation of the politics of Austria and
could, of course, not surmise that he himself would become
the most terrible incarnation of the "Pied Piper of Hamelin"
motif. See also the numerous interpretations of Hitler as a
Pied Piper in modern literature and caricatures in Wolfgang
Mieder, "'The Pied Piper of Hamelin': Origin, History, and
Survival of the Legend," in W. Mieder, Tradition and
Innovation in Folk Literature (Hanover, New Hampshire:
University Press of New England, 1987), pp. 45-83 and
236-243 (notes).
Wolfgang Mieder
Department of German and Russian
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont 05405
USA
Forum
