National Socialism and German Discourse by W J Dodd

Author:W J Dodd
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

for it did not create culture, just as it did not create religion, of which it also cannot be master. State, ‘Volk’, religious community are circles which must overlap extensively, for the good of mankind and its culture, which would fragment disastrously if ever these circles coincided.

In quoting Wilamowitz’s assault on ‘völkisch’ notions of cultural and political autarky in the German political discourse of the ‘Second’ Reich, the resort to history endorses an earlier voice in the current struggle. In a stark rebuttal of racial doctrine, Wilamowitz continues: “Wer diese Kultur bewußt oder unbewußt als ein Lebenselement in seiner Seele trägt, der ist ein Deutscher; Rasse, Sprache, Staatsangehörigkeit sind alle nicht entscheidend” (p. 384, “Whoever takes this culture into their soul as an element of life, whether consciously or unconsciously, is a German. Race , language, nationality are all not decisive.”)

The book review was a favoured genre for recommending authors with a potential for ‘Resistenz’. Indeed, it is possible to see a small network of mutual appreciation at work here: Schaezler recommends books by Sternberger and Storz , Oskar Loerke’s edited volume Deutscher Geist ( Hochland 38/5 (1940/1941), pp. 220–223), and Oskar Jancke’s Sprachdummheiten (1936) ( Hochland 34/1 (1937), p. 379). Storz reviews Reifferscheidt’s Satire und Polemik ( Hochland 38/9 (1940/1941), 364–366). Jewish authors are also commended. Remarkably, Karl Kraus is celebrated in an essay by Ludwig Hänsel ( Hochland 32/3 (1934/1935), 237–250), and accorded a respectful obituary ( Hochland 33/2 (1935/1936), 477), and Adolf Storfer’s Im Dickicht der Sprache (1937) is reviewed by Schaezler , who makes no mention of Storfer’s Jewishness or his close connection to Sigmund Freud ( Hochland 35/1 (1937/1938), 155–158. The article also contains a positive review of Storz 1937.) Armed with examples from Storfer , Schaezler commends the study of language to counter the simple beliefs of the ignorant (p. 155), revealing, inter alia, that Jubel (cheering) is Hebrew in origin, Hock an English shortened form of ‘Hochheimer’ wine, that iron technology, in which Germans consider themselves the world leaders, was invented by the Celts, and that in the aftermath of Metternich’s notorious secret police, colloquial Viennese idiom has twenty one expressions for Spitzel (informant). The very mention of this word here is an indication of Storfer’s subversive potential. The danger of “Sprachmengerei”, Schaezler comments disingenuously, may be less acute in an age of autarky, but newly created words show that language mixing still occurs in German, for example nordisieren (‘nordify’, its suffix a standard device for Germanizing Romance borrowings) and Knockout. These neologisms are clearly identifiable items in Nazi discourse, the first belonging to the Nordic myth of ‘Aryan’ racial superiority, the second belonging to Goebbels’s favourite sporting metaphor of life as a boxing match.

Two years earlier, Reifferscheidt had published a detailed rebuttal of the concept of autarky in language, evidently aimed at the Deutscher Sprachverein (“Autarkie der Sprache?”, Hochland 32/9 (1935), 246–256). “Unsere Muttersprache” (the first two words of the article) is, he explains, “unser Haus trotz den Anleihen bei fremden Völkern”

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