LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen (1947) is a book by
Victor KlempererVictor Klemperer was a businessman, journalist and eventually a Professor of Literature, specialising in the French Enlightenment at the Technische Universität Dresden...
, Professor of
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
at the University of
DresdenDresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
. The title, half in
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
and half in
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
, translates to
The Language of the Third Reich: A Philologist's Notebook.
Lingua Tertii Imperii studies the way that
NaziNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
propagandaPropaganda is communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience...
altered the German languageThis is a list of words, terms, concepts, and slogans that were specifically used in Nazi Germany.Some words were coined by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi Party members...
to inculcate people with National-Socialist ideas. The book was written under the form of personal notes which Klemperer wrote in his diary, especially from the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933, and even more after 1935, when Klemperer, stripped of his academic title because he was
JewishJudaism is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible , as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts...
(under the
Nuremberg LawsThe Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany which were introduced at the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. The laws classified people as German if all four of their grandparents were of "German or kindred blood", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from...
), had to work in a factory and started to use his diary as a personal exit to his frustrating and miserable life.
LTI shows a German language twisted into a
NewspeakNewspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year". Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the...
-like language. It also demonstrates how the new language came to be naturally spoken by most of the population. On the reverse, the text also emphasizes the idea that resistance to oppression begins by questioning the constant use of
buzzwordA buzzword is a idiom, usually a neologism, that is common to managerial, technical, administrative, and political work environments...
s. Both the book and its author unexpectedly survived the war.
LTI was first published in 1947 in Germany.
It underlines odd constructions of words intended to give a "scientific" or neutral aspect to otherwise heavily engaged discourses, as well as significant every-day behaviour.
Examples
Among the examples Klemperer recorded of propagandistic language use were the following.
Recurrent words
- Artfremd ("Alien to the species")
- Blindly
- Eternal
Eternal can mean:* Eternity, an infinite amount of time, or a timeless state* Eternal life, or immortalityIt can also refer to:-Anime and comics:* Eternals , Marvel Comics characters created by Jack Kirby in 1976...
- Fanatical
Fanatical is a Canadian half-hour documentary television series produced by Peace Point Entertainment Group and currently airs on TVtropolis and DejaView. FANatical explores the motivations and activities of people involved with the fandom of various television series...
/ Fanaticism (used in a particularly Orwellian way: strongly positively connotated for the "good" side, and strongly negatively connotated for the "bad" side)
- Instinct
Instinct is the inborn complex behavior of a living organism that is not learned. Since the 1910 NY Times article , most scientific journals consider the term outdated although it remains popular among the general public and a number of scientists...
- Spontaneous
Spontaneous acting out in complete surprise, typically requiring no outside influence or help.Spontaneity means the quality of being spontaneous and coming fromThe word spontaneous may also refer to:* Spontaneous abortion...
Euphemisms
- Sonderbehandlung ("special treatment"): murder
- Verschärfte Vernehmung ("Enhanced interrogation techniques
Enhanced interrogation techniques or alternative set of procedures were terms adopted by the George W. Bush administration in the United States for interrogation methods newly approved for use by US military intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to extract information from individuals...
"): torture
Recurrent expressions and motives
- the war "imposed" onto a peace-loving Führer
The word Führer is 'leader' or 'guide' in the German language, derived from the verb , a cognate of the Old English words faran and fær and the Modern English words derived from the older terms such as now mostly used in compounds such as wayfarer and sea-faring...
(The war against FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
and the United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
was officially declared by these countries, not by Germany—though the invasion of PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
triggered their declarations.)
- the "incommensurable hate" of the Jew
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s—note the Orwellian ambiguity: the Jews have an "incommensurable hate" of the Third Reich (aggressive or conspiratorial), but the German people have an "incommensurable hate" of the Jews (spontaneous and legitimate).
Prefixes
- Groß- ("grand")
- Volk(s)- ("Volk = people, Volks = of or for the people (prefix)"). Volksgemeinschaft
Volksgemeinschaft is a German expression meaning "people's community." It was most famously an attempt by the National Socialist German Workers' Party to establish a national community within Germany, based on pseudo-scientific racial terms. Though the idea existed as early as the First World War,...
designed the racially pure community of nations. VolkswagenThe Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft , also known as Volkswagen Group or as VW, is an automobile manufacturer and mobility organisation based in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany and is the pioneer brand within the Volkswagen Group, which contains the car brands Audi AG, Bentley Motors Ltd.,...
is an example of a term which has outlived the Third Reich.
- Welt- ("world", as in Weltanschauung, "intuition/view of the world"): this was quite a rare, specific and cultured term before the Third Reich, but became an everyday word. It came to designate the instinctive understanding of complex geo-political problems by the Nazis, which allowed them to openly begin invasions, twist facts or violate human rights, in the name of a higher ideal and in accordance to their theory of the world.
Neologisms
- arisieren ("to Aryanise")
- aufnorden ("to Nordicise", make more Nordic
The Nordic race was one of the racial subcategories into which white people were divided by anthropologists in the first half of the 20th century. The debates about this topic are nowadays mostly not considered scientific, but ideological...
).
- entjuden ("to de-Jew"). Conversely, after the war, a strong trend of Entnazifizierung ("denazification
Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the Nazi regime. It was carried out specifically by removing those involved from positions of influence and by disbanding or rendering impotent the...
") took place.
- Untermenschentum ("sub-humanity")
How "the language of a clique became the language of a people"
"No, the most powerful influence was exerted neither by individual speeches nor by articles or flyers, posters or flags; it was not achieved by things which one had to absorb by conscious thought or conscious emotions.
Instead Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of the people through single words, idioms and sentence structures which were imposed on them in a million repetitions and taken on board mechanically and unconsciously. . . language does not simply write and think for me, it also increasingly dictates my feelings and governs my entire spiritual being the more unquestioningly and unconsciously I abandon myself to it.
And what happens if the cultivated language is made up of poisonous elements or has been made the bearer of poisons? Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.
The Third Reich coined only a very small number of the words in its language, perhaps - indeed probably - none at all. . . But it changes the value of words and the frequency of their occurrence, it makes common property out of what was previously the preserve of an individual or a tiny group, it commandeers for the party that which was previously common property and in the process steeps words and groups of words and sentence structures with its poison.
[Victor Klemperer, ]The Language of the Third Reich: A Philologist's Notebook
, trans. Martin Brady, London: Continuum, 2002, pp. 15–16.
Denaturisation of the German language
For my own part I have never been able to understand how he
(Hitler) was capable, with his unmelodious and raucous voice, with his crude, often un-Germanically constructed sentences, and with a conspicuous rhetoric entirely at odds with the character of the German language, of winning over the masses with his speeches, of holding their attention and subjugating them for such appalling lengths of time.
The Language of the Third Reich
, p. 54.
Fanatical
Only a year after the collapse of the Third Reich a strangely conclusive piece of evidence can be advanced to support the claim that "fanatical", this key National Socialist term, never really had the sting taken out of it by excessive use. For although scraps of the LTI surface all over the place in contemporary language, "fanatical" has disappeared. From this one can safely conclude that either consciously or subconsciously people remained aware of the real facts of the case all through those twelve years, namely, that a confused state of mind, equally close to sickness and criminality, was for twelve years held to be the greatest virtue.
The Language of the Third Reich
, p. 61.
Concentration camps
Klemperer speaks about the British "concentration camps" in Africa during the Second Boer WarThe Second Boer War , commonly referred to as The Boer War and also known as the South African War , the Anglo-Boer War and in Afrikaans as the Anglo-Boereoorlog or Tweede Vryheidsoorlog , or the Engelse oorlog was fought...
, which were internment camps, and bore "a taste of vacation camp", according to him. I think that, in the future, wherever the word "concentration camp" will be pronounced, people will think of Nazi Germany, and only of Nazi Germany
. (29th of October, 1933)
In film
Language Does Not Lie
(La Langue ne ment pas), a 2003 documentary film based on Klemperer's book, directed by Stan Neumann
See also
- 1984 (novel)
- Big Lie
The Big Lie is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf for a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously"....
- Doublespeak
Doublespeak is language constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms or deliberate ambiguity....
- Glossary of the Third Reich
This is a list of words, terms, concepts, and slogans that were specifically used in Nazi Germany.Some words were coined by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi Party members...
- Groupthink
Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas...
- Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reichsminister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945...
- Newspeak
Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year". Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the...
- Propaganda
Propaganda is communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience...
- Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- Völkischer Beobachter
The Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from February 8, 1923...
External links