Figure 1.-- |
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NAZI officials were determined not only to purge Germany of non-German people, especially the Jews, but of other non-German influences. Here language was one of the cultural areas addressed by the NAZIs. Scholars now call the language policy of the NAZI regime as 'Nazi Deutsch'. [Lane and Rupp, xxvii.] The style of NAZI Deutsch is difficult to describe stlistically because it range from formal, highly academic papers to the crudist coloquial German used in vicious abnti-Semetic tracts. NAZI Deutch changed the meanings of some words and added a range of implications that were not always entirely clear. This often makes it difficult to translate NAZI prose. The lack of clarity arises from the fact that there was no single arbiter for the language changes promoted. although Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels was highly influential. NAZI language policy had two primary goals: language 1) purity and 2) poliitization. First, the German effort at language purity can be seem a one of many efforts to purge non-German influences from national life. This is not a unique policy. We see the French and French Canadians doing the sane today, primarily an effort to precent the enroaxchment of English. Academic and publishing authorities launched an effort to delete words, phrases and concepts from the German language if theywere classified as either unGerman or unAryan. This went a far as changing the names of popular French foods. The hertz, a measure of radio waves, was renamed because noted pyicist Heunrich Hertz was of Jewish ancestry.
One group violating NAZI language policies were Esperantists seeking to promote an international language. Some of those promoting Esperato were arrested and a few even executed. The more extreme sanctions were probanly related to the anti-NAZI orientation of some Esparantists. The German Esperanto Association itself like most Germans attempted to accommodate itself to the regime. Theyveventually accepted National Socialist racial theories, ejected Jewish members, and minimized NAZI abuses. [Forster, pp. 216-229.] With the outbreak of the War, NAZI officials relaxed their persuit of langauage purity, in part because more important issues arose. One author suggests that it proved restricting to the NAZI leadership. [Henningsen, p. 47.] The NAZIs also began shaping the German language to promote National Socialist ideology. [Klemperer] This seems a effort which was characteristic of totalitarian societies because the political elites controlled the instututions which influenced language. German language policy with the invasion of Czechozlovakia (March 1939) and then with the subsequent stunning military successes during the early phase of World War II beame an element of German occupation policy, imposed upon subject peoples. Here the policies varied with the countries occupied and the people caught up in the NAZI malestorm.
NAZI officials were determined not only to purge Germany of non-German people, especially the Jews, but of other non-German influences. Here language was one of the cultural areas addressed by the NAZIs. Scholars now call the language policy of the NAZI regime as 'Nazi Deutsch'. [Lane and Rupp, xxvii.] The style of NAZI Deutsch is difficult to describe stlistically because it range from formal, highly academic papers to the crudist coloquial German used in vicious abnti-Semetic tracts. NAZI Deutch changed the meanings of some words and added a range of implications that were not always entirely clear. This often makes it difficult to translate NAZI prose. The lack of clarity arises from the fact that there was no single arbiter for the language changes promoted. although Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels was highly influential.
NAZI language policy had two primary goals: language 1) purity and 2) poliitization. First, the German effort at language purity can be seem a one of many efforts to purge non-German influences from national life. This is not a unique policy. We see the French and French Canadians doing the sane today, primarily an effort to precent the enroaxchment of English. Academic and publishing authorities launched an effort to delete words, phrases and concepts from the German language if theywere classified as either unGerman or unAryan. This went a far as changing the names of popular French foods. The hertz, a measure of radio waves, was renamed because noted pyicist Heunrich Hertz was of Jewish ancestry.
One group violating NAZI language policies were Esperantists seeking to promote an international language. Some of those promoting Esperato were arrested and a few even executed. The more extreme sanctions were probanly related to the anti-NAZI orientation of some Esparantists. The German Esperanto Association itself like most Germans attempted to accommodate itself to the regime. Theyveventually accepted National Socialist racial theories, ejected Jewish members, and minimized NAZI abuses. [Forster, pp. 216-229.] With the outbreak of the War, NAZI officials relaxed their persuit of langauage purity, in part because more important issues arose. One author suggests that it proved restricting to the NAZI leadership. [Henningsen, p. 47.] The NAZIs also began shaping the German language to promote National Socialist ideology. [Klemperer] This seems a effort which was characteristic of totalitarian societies because the political elites controlled the instututions which influenced language.
German language policy with the invasion of Czechozlovakia (March 1939) and then with the subsequent stunning military successes during the early phase of World War II beame an element of German occupation policy, imposed upon subject peoples. Here the policies varied with the countries occupied and the people caught up in the NAZI malestorm. With the NAZI invasion and implementation of an occuparion regime, German became the official language. The toleration of other languages varied widely within the NAZI empire. With territiories inciorporated within the Reich there was essentially no other language tolerated. Policies in other occupied areas varied. Here there were major differences between the East and West.
Forster, Peter Glover. The Esperanto Movement (Walter de Gruyter: 1982).
Henningson, Manfred. "The Politics of Purity and Exclusion: Literary and Linguistic Movements of Political Empowerment in America, Africa, the South Pacific and Europe"in Bjorn H. Jernudd and Michael Shapiro (eds). The Politics of Language Purism . Contributions to the Sociology of Language. No. 54 (Mouton de Gruyter: New York, 1989).
Klemperer, Victor. Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen (1947). Victor Klemperercwas a Professor of Literature at the University of Dresden. The titleuses both Latin and German and means, "The Language of the Third Reich: A Philologist's Notebook". The book is perhaps the most insightful assessmentbof NAZI language policy written by aerson severely affected by it. Klemperer explains how the NAZIs shaped the German language to promote National Socialist ideology. With the issuance of the Nuremberg Laws was stripped of his academic title and had to work in a factory (1935). Here he was in a sence fortunate because many Jews lost factory jobs. He began a personal journal before the NAZIs seized power and used the journal to record what was happening around him.
Lane, Barbara Miller and Leila J. Rupp. Nazi Ideology before 1933: A Documentation (1978).
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