The Language of the Third Reich: Lti, Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook

by Victor Klemperer

Under the Third Reich, the official language of Nazism came to be used as a political tool. The existing social culture was manipulated and subverted as the German people had their ethical values and their thoughts about politics, history and daily life recast in a new language. This Notebook, originally called LTI (Lingua Tertii Imperii)-the abbreviation itself a parody of Nazified language-was written out of Klemperer's conviction that the language of the Third Reich helped to create its culture. As Klemperer "it isn't only Nazi actions that have to vanish, but also the Nazi cast of mind, the typical Nazi way of thinking, and its breeding the language of Nazism." This brilliant, entertaining, profound, and ultimately saddening and horrifying book is one of the great twentieth-century studies of language and of its engagement with history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Language, Linguistics, Germany, Philosophy

296 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Victor Klemperer (9 October 1881 – 11 February 1960) worked as a commercial apprentice, a journalist and eventually a Professor of Literature, specialising in the French Enlightenment at the Technische Universität Dresden. His diaries detailing his life under successive German states -the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic- were published in 1995. His recollections on the Third Reich have since become standard sources; extensively quoted by Saul Friedlander, Michael Burleigh and Richard J. Evans.

Reviews

[Nika · Rating 4 out of 5]

" Language which writes and thinks for you! "
This assertion speaks for itself, does it not?

Victor Klemperer was a philologist and professor of Romance languages married to an 'Aryan' woman. He spent all twelve years of the Nazi regime in Germany. He managed to survive. During those years, he was able to witness everyday life and make notes of it despite increasing limitations imposed on him as a Jew. He spoke with people with whom he lived in the so-called Jews’ house and with whom he worked at a factory. He was grabbing pieces of information from here and there, from newspapers, speeches, and books.
This book has 36 chapters, each highlighting an aspect of the LTI - The Language of The Third Reich. The author registered the characteristic words and expressions of the LTI. He tried to explain why the Third Reich's language was so totalitarian. Even the victims resorted to speaking 'the language of the victor.'

Technical metaphors, expressions borrowed from sport, various references to Blood and Soil and the Teutonic traditions, foreign words and newly coined terms (have you heard of the verb ‘coventrieren {coventryize}?) pervaded the LTI. "Fanatical", "organize" and "set up" were among the favorite words. Everyone has to be fanatical about something and many ordinary things have to be organized. If you need to buy good soap, you have to organize it!

Klemperer makes an argument about Romanticism. He concludes that National-Socialism was marked by the influences of Romanticism. Its traces could be found in writings and speeches.
As he points out, "romanticism, not only of the kitschy kind, but also the real one, dominates the period, and the innocent and the mixers of poison, the victims and the henchmen, both draw on this same source."
To this astute observation I would add that Victorian science may also have influenced the Nazi ideology. I mean a reductionist view of the concept of "survival of the fittest," which seems to have been typical of Hitler and the co-authors of the Nazi empire.

The LTI was intent on keeping people from thinking at all costs.

Emotion had to suppress the intellect and itself surrender to a state of numbing dullness without any freedom of will or feeling; how else would one have got hold of the necessary crowd of executioners and torturers? What does a perfect group of followers do? It doesn’t think, and it doesn’t even feel any more – it follows.

Goebbels, minister of propaganda, was industriously working to achieve this goal.

Words matter. They may have a significant impact on people. It was so in the past, it is still so now. People often reveal themselves when they start talking. In lingua veritas.
In Nazi Germany, language and the worldview (Weltanschauung) that most people have adopted are correlated. Certain words and expressions, which were incessantly hammered home and evoked strong images, affected people’s thinking. Those who did not succumb to the 'virus' constituted a threatened minority.

The book would probably be of more interest to those who have at least some basic understanding of the German language. They would fully appreciate some of the observations made by the author. Sometimes, the coy omission of only one syllable can make a difference.
"The borderline of nazi self-confdence runs precisely between ‘gehören {belong}’ and ‘hören {hear}’."
The writing is dense, not always easily accessible but rewarding in the end.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most important lesson from reading Victor Klemperer’s notebook on the language of the “Third Reich” is this:

It’s not simply that language composes poetry and thinks for me, it also drives my feelings, it directs my entire spiritual being, the more self-evidently, the more unconsciously I give myself up to it.

Actually, I should have said “the lesson that I deemed most important for me”, because using a superlative like the one above and stating it as a fact is exactly one of the things the Nazis did to steer the thoughts and minds of the stupid masses.

Actually, I shouldn’t use the phrase “stupid masses”, because a pejorative term like this only heats up any rational discussion and is driving a wedge between an “us” and a “them”.

Actually, I shouldn’t use so many quotes whose only purpose is to distract from the real meaning of words.

Actually, I don’t even know what the real meanings of words are and I probably shouldn’t have started this review in the first place.


PS: Am I the only one who find it ironic that a born Jew (an later protestant) by the name of Victor deconstructs and ultimately defeats his arch-nemesis whom his parents gave the name Joseph, a name of Hebrew origin?


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Donald Trump’s orchestrated coronation has led to renewed interest in books by George Orwell, Sinclair Lewis, and Phillip Roth. While LTI: Notebook of a Philologist, Victor Klemperer’s shorthand for lingua tertii imperii (language of the imperial territory), doesn’t have the cachet or literary chops of those works, it’s probably more relevant to help decipher and evaluate how the language of fascism creeps into our public discourse. After Jews were forbidden to use libraries or own or buy books and magazines, Klemperer’s LTI project became his primary scholarly, intellectual compulsion. Explaining and documenting how the language of Nazi Germany changed and unconsciously infiltrated everyday life became his purpose, especially since he believed his life might end any day. I read this ten years ago as history; rereading it now makes it seem like a political owners manual for our times. It is impossible not to draw parallels between the use of language in his time and ours.

Consider his comments from February 19, 1938: “…the basic principle of the whole language of the Third Reich became apparent to me: a bad conscience; its triad: defending oneself, praising oneself, accusing—never a moment of calm testimony.” Sound familiar? From the very first days of the Third Reich, even as the Nazis rounded up and arrested Communists with the implicit support of the majority of Germans, Klemperer recognized anti-Semitism was “the most effective method of propaganda for the party…because what do the German masses know about the dangers of ‘niggerization’ and how far does their knowledge about the supposed inferiority of people in the East and South reach? But everyone knows a Jew.” Today it seems that everyone thinks they know a so-called illegal immigrant, Muslim, or abuser of social welfare—even though most don’t.

“I judge as an intellectual,” noted Klemperer, “and Mr. Goebbels calculates with masses who have become drunk.” More to the point, “philosophizing is a function of understanding, of logical thinking, and Nazism stands against it like a deadly enemy.” He notes that “the jargon of the Third Reich sentimentalizes; that is always suspect.” The parallels we see today on the right in the U.S., France, the Netherlands, Germany, and other nations are inescapable. Those who fall under the spell of current right-wing, fascist ideas would rather believe than consider empirical or pragmatic arguments. They yearn for a past that never existed outside of fiction. Klemperer’s conclusion that “the foundation of the Nazi doctrine belongs to a conviction of thoughtlessness and the absolute dumbing down of the masses” is as contemporary today as when he wrote it.

Among his more interesting observations is how much of Nazi propaganda was based on Americanisms—an overuse of bombastic superlatives, consistent attributions of greatness and superiority, the constant use of the jargon of sports and competition, and ranking subjective, unquantifiable concepts. Ideas and language like American exceptionalism ("the greatest country in the world"), inane debates of which athletes from different eras are “better,” or “competitions” like the Oscars, which claim to elevate various categories of film production as “best,” were copied in their own way in Nazi Germany. Even the Hitlerian idea of Lebensraum, as Timothy Snyder noted in Bloodlands , found its inspiration in the American idea of Manifest Destiny. Taken together, all these Americanisms helped support the fanaticism Nazis craved and demanded of their followers.

LTI was also “a language of the jails” in that people used words with hidden meanings and code words to help them survive. Klemperer noted how the German prefix ent- (de-) was a Nazi rhetorical device used to make common the idea of enforcing rules of purity. Ironically, it survived the Third Reich to be used in terms like Entnazifizierung (de-Nazification). They also sanitized their most invasive and sinister intentions with language. “Evacuation” or “ordered to appear” became short hand for “sent to a concentration camp.” “Security” meant legally justified repression. “Mongrel” was “not Aryan.” The lesson Americans should learn today is that Trumpism tries to do the very same thing.

Klemperer’s awe-inspiring diaries are required reading for anyone who has a deep interest in the social and cultural history of the Third Reich. While not as readable as those books, LTI may be more important to inform the present and future. A healthy polity must have a language that accurately conveys its most fundamental principles. When language becomes perverted, when words can’t be commonly understood for what they really mean, when orators, writers, and readers knowingly and unknowingly fall victim to internalizing and repeating these corrupt distortions, the consequences are not just about semantics. They deform our humanity.

[Emiliya Bozhilova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Четенето на предговорите към световните класики, издадени през 70-те и 80-те има една уловка. Макар и изключително ерудирани, в повечето случаи, авторите им се подчиняваха на диктата на времето си, т. е. вмъкваха съответните дежурни параграфи “социалистически реализъм”, размесени на равни интервали с увлекателния преглед на автор и епоха. Прескачането им беше лесно, защото се открояваха ярко с шаблонността си, обикновено още първата дума в изречението ги издаваше.

Клемперер, за съжаление, не е можел толкова лесно да се абстрахира от наречения от него LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii, Езикът на Третия Райх. Езикът е приятел и инструмент на филолога, какъвто е бил Клемперер . Освен ако не се превърне в негов враг. Клемперер избира да анализира и изучава врага си, вместо да му се подчини, и го прави с единственото достъпно му към момента оръжие - филологическия анализ, дори, и всъщност най-вече, когато Нюрнбергските закони за расова чистота го поставят извън университета, катедрата, библиотеката, социалния му кръг, родния му дом.

Клемперер разглежда този “новговор” педантично, детайлно, неутрално и даже суховато. Дума по дума - буквално крадени, защото на един евреин достъпът до официални източници, приемани от другите като достъпни по подразбиране (вестници, радио, енциклопедии, романи, социални събития) са му били забранени като достъп. Даже дрехите му е следвало да са втора употреба, специално за евреи.

Новговорът на третия райх е наистина по Оруел: умишлено беден, умишлено клиширан, силно патетичен и приповдигнат, даже мистичен, поляризиращо прескачащ между профанното и възвишеното (Клемперер нарича това “контрастен душ”). От него няма отърване, той дебне навсякъде - думите се забиват с милиони повторения, докато изковат матрицата на желаното от властта мислене, с тъпо и неуморно постоянство. Докато всяка неодобрена дума, зад която стои неодобрена мисъл за интелект, критичен анализ, рационализъм, хуманизъм, се удавят в потопа от еднотипни клишета, изисквани във всеки възможен вид комуникация на ежедневието - образование, управление, икономика, армия, бит. Никак не е изненадващо, че много германци лесно прихващат заразата, едва в течение на някак��и си 12 години, и е отнело десетилетия да се прочисти донякъде. Езикът на третия райх се усвоява точно толкова лесно и неусетно привично, колкото и всеки ежедневен социален код, нужен за оцеляването ни в група.

Докато достолепният хер Клемперер разкостваше LTI, на мен ми беше прелюбопитен човекът зад всички тези филологически (и не само) размисли. Самият му подход издава доста за него. Германец. От най-истинските. От онези, които са се били през първата световна война за тази страна, считат я за своя родина, обичат културата и са се втъкали в нейната реалност. Германец с критично мислене, презиращ широката маса германци за наивността, невежеството, мързела и тесногръдието им. От онези, които са се захванали да чистят боклука в първия възможен момент. Еврейският произход е просто историческа подробност без решаващо значение. Клемперер преди всичко принадлежи на човечеството, после на страната си, после на съпругата си (“арийска” германка, която никога не го изоставя, дори при дрезденските бомбардировки), и чак накрая - към другите категории, важащи за конкретния случай.

Подобно на Стефан Цвайг, Виктор Клемперер е продукт на Сецесиона, златната епоха преди 1914 г., когато глобализмът и хуманизмът за кратко надделяват поне на културния европейски фронт и формират поколение, част от което никога няма да приеме ограниченията на расова или националистическа идеология, която да цели унищожението на цяла конкретна част от човечеството (национална или расова). Клемперер обаче е по-техничен, повече живеещ сред филологическата си реалност, и това - подобно на психиатъра Виктор Франкъл и химика Примо Леви в концлагерите - го спасява психологически. Както и госпожа Клемперер. Затова тази книга може са се чете и като любовен роман - на един филолог към езика, на един германец към Германия и на един съпруг към спътницата в живота му.

3,5 ⭐️

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first discovered this, and his diaries, during work on my Master's thesis (specifically the chapter dealing with language as a tool for brutalisation in Nazi Germany). It left me speechless with admiration. The fact that one can see similar techniques being used again and again around the world, only amplifies the importance of his studies. Very glad to see it has been published by Routledge as my old copy is falling apart...

[Kuszma · Rating 5 out of 5]

„»A nyelv, amely érted költ és érted gondolkodik« méreg, amelyet az ember öntudatlanul vesz magához, és amely észrevétlen fejti ki hatását – erre nem lehet elégszer utalni.”


(Goebbels, a legfőbb méregkeverők egyike.)

Nem szakirodalom és nem is napló – hanem életmentő írás. Úgy értem, itt van egy tudós – hívjuk az egyszerűség kedvéért Klemperernek. Ettől a tudóstól elvesznek mindent, a katedráját, a könyvtárát, minden eszközt, ami elengedhetetlen ahhoz, hogy az ember tudósként működjön. Alacsonyrendű embertípust csinálnak belőle, olyasvalakit, aki legfeljebb a rendszer kegyelmének köszönheti, hogy életben van – még -, de különben levegőt se vegyen, mert megkeserüli. Mit tehet ez az ember, hogy továbbra is embernek tudja tekinteni magát? Hát elkezdi elemezni, feldolgozni azt, amitől nem tudják és nem is akarják elzárni, ami - ha akarja, ha nem - körbeveszi, mint valami fojtogató füst. Ez a valami pedig nem más, mint a nácik nyelve.

Bűnösen leszűkíteném a könyv hatókörét, ha azt mondanám, a propagandáról szól. Nem, sokkal többről: magáról a diktatúrák nyelvéről, erről a roncsolt, totálisan átpolitizált organizmusról, ami körbeveszi az állam polgárait, és minden erejével azon van, hogy átprogramozza őket. Sajnos: sikerrel. Klemperer kötetének legnagyobb tanulsága ugyanis éppen az, hogy a nyelv a gondolkodás alapja – ha átalakítanak egy nyelvet, akkor azzal a gondolkodást is átalakítják. Még ha a rendszer ellenzéke vagy, akkor is a rendszer nyelvét kell eszközül használd – következésképpen a rendszer része leszel. És ez borzalmas. Csak úgy vonhatja ki magát az ember az ördögi körből, ha minden erejével ennek a jelenségnek a megértésére törekszik, felboncolja, bemutatja, miért üres és mitől működik mégis. A rossz hír az, hogy ehhez bizony zseniális filológusnak kell lenni. És úgy gondolom, Klemperer az. Hogy zsidó származású? Hogyne. De jobban érti és használja a német nyelvet, mint bárki a nemzetiszocializmus dingókutyái közül. Talán ezért is gyűlölték annyira.

(Gratulálnom kell továbbá az Ampersand Kiadónak, mert ez egy pazar kötet mind szerkesztéstechnikailag, mind a fordítás tekintetében. Pedig hát nem lehetett egyszerű ezt a német nyelvről német nyelven szóló alapművet úgy magyarítani, hogy ne vesszen el az íze.)

[Théo d'Or]

The language reveals. Sometimes, someone wants to hide the truth within words. But the language does not lie. And sometimes, someone wants to tell the truth. But the language turns out to be more sincere than he is. There is no way to effectively eliminate the sincerity of language. Philologists and poets are able to know the essence of language, but they fail to prevent language from telling the truth.

Absolute truth, when imposed by force, becomes an absolute lie.
The absolute truth is always difficult to understand, because the human representations of the absolute are often completely different. The standardization of these representations can be done only in the conditions of dictatorship and oppression. Wasn't Nazism the result of liberalism that relativizes the canon of conservative values in the German tradition ?
Klemperer believes that the liberal is the one who considers the phrase correct : " There are many places in my Father's house ". And the legacy of Nazism can be defeated if " the youth learns the 10 commandments again ".
Klemperer's opinions are worth remembering, for that these questions always remain present in our disputes.

[Katherine Addison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is what happens when a Jewish philologist takes up a project to keep from going insane under Nazi rule. It is amazing .

Klemperer was a Jew married to an "Aryan" woman who refused to give him up. So he spent the years of the Third Reich in Dresden, working in a factory instead of a university, living in a "Jews' House," being harassed by the Gestapo, forbidden to read any books written by Aryans. . . and to keep himself sane, he started what today we would call #LTI: notes in his diary about the Lingua Tertii Imperii, the way Nazis used language, and the way their use of language infected and corrupted the German language as a whole.

This is a brilliant book. His observations about language always lead back to the society he's living in, the oppression he's suffering under, the way ordinary Germans behaved (along a sliding spectrum of anti-Semitism), the way the Gestapo thugs behaved, the character of Goebbels as revealed in his speeches . . . thousands of tiny details that even the best social history of the Third Reich can't offer, because this is a man observing and analyzing from ground zero.

I tend to prefer secondary sources to primary sources (I feel this is a terrible character flaw, but there it is), but Klemperer is both. He's analyzing his own experiences as they happen to him, analyzing his own reactions, and always digging at words, the words people use, the words people don't use, the way metaphors influence the way people think.

This reprint was published by Bloomsbury in 2013 (in a TERRIBLE sans serif font which I hate with a cold and venomous hatred), so it's still readily available. I got it from Amazon. If you are interested in the Holocaust, in Nazi Germany, or in linguistics, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

[Margarita Garova · Rating 4 out of 5]

„А нищо не ни сближава така с душата на един народ, както неговия език.“
„В езика си проличава всичко.“

Езикът създава цели светове, които, макар и измислени, могат да са по-солидни от реалните. Езикът измисля нашите врагове (речта на омразата), подтиква ни към действия с напомпани епитети („героична“ и „фанатична“ борба), създава изкуствени връзки с измислени реалии („велика нация“, „славно минало“). Достатъчен е умел езиков жонгльор като доктор Гьобелс, който да подбере правилното съчетание от думи, да ги завърти в гражданския оборот достатъчно често и натрапчиво и имате готова рецепта за широкомащабно промиване на мозъци.

В „Езикът на Третия Райх“ филологът Виктор Клемперер разнищва нацистката лексика в цялата й манипулативна „прелест“ на основата на бележки, които си води по време на дванайсетгодишната хитлерова ера. Бях запозната с премеждията на автора в този период от чудесната книга за Дрезден от Синклер Маккей. Клемперер е евреин, чийто брак с арийка го спасява от газовите камери, но на който не му се разминават всички останали унижения и мъчения – уволнение от професорския пост, прогонване от дома, побоища в Гестапо. Клемперер избягва по чудо смъртта по време на бомбардировките над Дрезден, а след падането на Райха се завръща към преподаването в това, което вече се нарича Източна Германия.

Тонът на книгата е доминиран от академичната ирония, която много добре подправя иначе суховатата тема за тоталитарния език видян през сетивата на филолога. Езикът на Третия Райх е остроумно осмян в цялата си псевдогероична патетика и расова нелепост, но и с внушението, че това е език-заплаха, генератор на страх, омраза и механична административна студенина – език, на който се издават военни директиви, преброяват се изгорени трупове и се ожесточават милиони. Смехотворното не винаги е безобидно.
Книгата определено не е за масова читателска употреба. На мнозина ще се стори сложна и скучна, твърде филоложка и аналитична. Но аз определено виждам конкретна практическа полза от нея, доколкото много от гьобелсовите техники за сплашване, подстрекаване, и зашеметяване в патриотарско въодушевление и военщина, се използват широко в кафявите медии и в политическия език днес. Умението да се разпознават граничните състояния на езика е есенциално – тогава, когато от средство за общуване и обмен на информация, езикът се превръща в оръжие за масово психологическо поразяване. Средствата за това обичайно са много елементарни, въздействат на най-примитивните възприятия, ле��ни са за смилане и употреба и се повтарят достатъчно често, че да се превърнат в менюто на деня. Такъв език пристрастява с високия си емоционален регистър, защото шокира, възмущава и скандализира, и се набива в речта дори на онези, които по своята идеологическа нагласа, образование и култура, не би следвало да са негови жертви и ползватели. Неслучайно думата „вирулентно“ е неологизмът, който характеризира популярността, с която се разпространява сензационна информация в социалните мрежи. Вирусът на лошия, беден, омразен език, срещу който няма ефективна ваксина.

[Ρένα Λούνα · Rating 5 out of 5]

Β’ και τελικό μέρος όπου πλέκω το εγκώμιο του «Η γλώσσα του Τρίτου Ράιχ: Το σημειωματάριο ενός φιλολόγου» του Victor Klemperer (μετφ. Μαργαρίτα Ζαχαριάδου, Εκδόσεις Άγρα).
Μάλλον ο ενθουσιασμός μου έγκειται στο πόσα διαφορετικά μέρη καλύπτει αλλά και πόσα μπορεί τελικά να προσφέρει: τα μέρη είναι γεμάτα από ιστορικές αναλύσεις γραμμένες απλά, κατανοητά και σύντομα (για όσους από εμάς δεν ξέρουμε αλλά θέλουμε να μάθουμε), πολύ σαφείς εξηγήσεις των γερμανικών λέξεων (φαντάζομαι πόσο πιο σύντομα θα διαβαστεί από κάποιον που ξέρει γερμανικά) αλλά και τα πολλά συγκινητικά παραδείγματα που Klemperer, τα οποία είναι σίγουρα η κόλλα που ενώνει όλο το έργο και δίνει ζωή στην έννοια της «φιλολογικής παρατήρησης» που εξ αρχής στόχευε να ρίξει φως στην πολιτική και κοινωνική συμπεριφορά που «βοηθάει» ένα κράτος να στραφεί μέσα στον εαυτό του και να ξεριζώσει ένα δικό του κομμάτι σάρκας. Είναι συγκλονιστικό και αποκαλυπτικό όχι μόνο επειδή προσφέρει μια ανατριχιαστικά λεπτομερή μαρτυρία για την καθημερινή ζωή υπό το ναζιστικό καθεστώς, αλλά κυρίως γιατί αποκαλύπτει τη δύναμη της γλώσσας να διαμορφώνει σκέψη, συνείδηση και τελικά, πολιτική πραγματικότητα.
Ο Klemperer, με τη ματιά του φιλολόγου και την αγωνία του ανθρώπου που ζει αποκλεισμένος και υπό συνεχή απειλή, καταγράφει πώς η γλώσσα του ναζισμού δεν ήταν απλώς εργαλείο επικοινωνίας αλλά ένα όπλο εξόντωσης. Μέσα από μικρές, φαινομενικά αθώες αλλαγές στο λεξιλόγιο, το καθεστώς εδραίωσε και διέδωσε την ιδεολογία του, καθιστώντας την αυτονόητη, αναπόφευκτη και σπουδαία. Ο όρος LTI (Lingua Tertii Imperii), που επινοεί, περιγράφει αυτή τη «νέα γλώσσα» όπου το ίδιο το λεξιλόγιο επιβάλλει έναν τρόπο σκέψης, σχεδόν χωρίς να το αντιλαμβάνεται ο ομιλητής.
Ζούμε σε μια εποχή όπου η δημοκρατία δείχνει να υποχωρεί μπροστά σε αυταρχικές δυνάμεις. Η άνοδος της ακροδεξιάς δεν είναι πλέον εξαίρεση αλλά σχεδόν κανόνας κι έτσι ένα από τα πιο επικίνδυνα όπλα της νέας ακροδεξιάς είναι και πάλι η γλώσσα. Ο ρόλος της ακροδεξιάς είναι όχι να έχει δίκιο, όχι να ρίξει φως, αλλά να προκαλέσει σύγχυση στα συναισθήματα, άγχος, φόβο και να ακουστεί καλά, τόσο καλά ώστε να κανονικοποιήσει τις λέξεις μέσα στα στόματα, δημιουργώντας στρατόπεδα, αντιπάλους και εχθρούς, γραφικούς και επικίνδυνους. Το να «ανοίγεις» μια λέξη είναι το πιο χρήσιμο δώρο και όπλο άμυνας, άρα ποτέ δεν θα μπορούσαμε να χάσουμε, μιλώντας μεταξύ μας για τη σημασία των πολιτικών, κι όχι μόνο, λέξεων. Εάν κάτι θέλει η ακροδεξιά είναι μια Βαβέλ που ωρύεται.
Δεν το λέω ποτέ αυτό για βιβλία, αλλά αυτό φαντάζει να είναι αναγκαίο ανάγνωσμα — όχι μόνο ως ιστορικό τεκμήριο, αλλά ως εργαλείο κατανόησης και αντίστασης. Μας δείχνει πώς ο φασισμός δεν έρχεται πάντα με στολές και εμβατήρια· έρχεται και με λέξεις, με φράσεις που σιγά σιγά γίνονται αποδεκτές, που φιλτράρονται στην καθημερινότητά μας και δηλητηριάζουν τη συλλογική σκέψη. Ο Klemperer μάς καλεί να προσέχουμε τις λέξεις — όχι από γλωσσική εμμονή, αλλά από πολιτική και ηθική ανάγκη.
Κλείνω με τα αποσπάσματα που ξεχώρισα στο Β’ μέρος της ανάγνωσης (εάν και είναι μέγα λάθος που τα ξεριζώνω έτσι, απλά ευελπιστώ να σας ανοίξω την όρεξη):
«Δὲν μοῦ ἐπιτρεπόταν πιὰ νὰ εἰσφέρω στὴ φιλοζωική Ένωση γιὰ τὶς γάτες, διότι στὰ Γερμανικὰ Αιλουροειδή εἰλικρινά, ἔτσι ὀνομαζόταν πιὰ τὸ ἐνημερωτικό φυλλάδιο τῆς ἕνωσης, ποὺ εἶχε καταντήσει κομματικὸ ὄργανο- δὲν ὑπῆρχε πλέον χῶρος γιὰ τὰ μπάσταρδα πλάσματα ποὺ διατηροῦσαν οἱ Ἑβραῖοι. Αργότερα, μᾶς πῆραν τὰ κατοικίδιά μας γάτες, σκύλους, ἀκόμα καὶ καναρίνια καὶ τὰ σκότωσαν, κι αὐτὸ δὲν ἔγινε σὲ μεμονωμένες περιπτώσεις καὶ ἀπὸ προσωπικὴ μοχθηρία, ἀλλὰ ἐπισήμως καὶ συστηματικά πρόκειται γιὰ μιὰ ἀπὸ ἐκεῖνες τὶς βάναυσες πράξεις ποὺ δὲν δικάστηκαν σὲ καμιὰ Δίκη τῆς Νυρεμβέργης, ἀλλὰ πού, ἂν ἦταν στο χέρι μου, θὰ ἔστηνα γι' αὐτὲς ἕνα πελώριο ικρίωμα, κι ἂς ἔχανα για πάντα τὴν ψυχή μου.»
[…]
«Βρήκαμε το δρόμο πρὸς τὴν αἰωνιότητα», λέει ο Robert Ley στὰ ἐγκαίνια ἑνὸς οἰκοτροφείου στὶς ἀρχὲς τοῦ 1938. Στὶς ἐξετάσεις τῶν μαθητευόμενων τεχνιτῶν ἔπεφτε συχνὰ ἡ ἐρώτηση παγίδα: «Τί ἔρχεται μετὰ τὸ Τρίτο Ράιχ; ». Αν κάποιος ἀδαὴς ξεγελιόταν κι ἀπαντοῦσε τὸ Τέταρτο Ράιχ», κοβόταν ὡς ἀνεπαρκής νεολαῖος τοῦ κόμματος (ἀκόμα κι ἂν οἱ γνώσεις του στὸ ἀντικείμενό του ἦταν καλές). Διότι ἡ σωστὴ ἀπάντηση ἦταν «Τίποτα δὲν ἔρχεται μετά το Τρίτο Ράιχ εἶναι ἡ αἰώνια αὐτοκρατορία τῶν Γερμανῶν».
[…]
«Γι' αὐτούς, ὅποιος ντύνεται διαφορετικὰ καὶ μιλάει διαφορετικὰ δὲν εἶναι συνάνθρωπός τους ἀλλὰ ζῶο ἀπὸ ἄλλο στάβλο, μὲ τὸ ὁποῖο δὲν μπορεῖ νὰ ὑπάρξει καμία συναντίληψη εἶναι κάτι μισητό, κάτι ποὺ τὸ δαγκώνεις γιὰ νὰ τὸ διώξεις μακριά. Ἡ «φυλή» ὡς ἔννοια τῆς ἐπιστήμης καὶ τῆς ψευδοεπιστή μης ὑφίσταται μόλις ἀπὸ τὰ μέσα του 18ου αἰώνα. Ἀλλὰ ὡς αἴσθηση μιᾶς ἐνστικτώδους ἀποστροφῆς ἔναντι τοῦ ξένου, μιᾶς ἔμφυτης ἔχθρας ἀπέναντί του, ἡ φυλετικὴ συνείδηση εἶναι χαρακτηριστικὸ τῆς κατώτατης ἐξελικτικῆς βαθμίδας τῆς ἀνθρωπότητας, ἡ ὁποία ξεπερνιέται ὅταν μιὰ ἐπιμέρους ἀνθρώπινη ἀγέλη μαθαίνει νὰ ἀντιμετωπίζει τὰ μέλη τῆς διπλανῆς ἀγέλης ὡς ἀνθρώπους, καὶ ὄχι ὡς ἕνα διαφορετικὸ εἶδος ζώου.»
[…]
«Πιστεύετε δηλαδὴ πὼς ὁ Χίτλερ ἔχει διαβάσει κάποιο ἔργο τοῦ Χέρτσλ;»
«Δεν πιστεύω πως αὐτὸς ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἔχει διαβάσει ποτέ του τίποτα στὰ σοβαρά. Ανέκαθεν ἅρπαζε ψήγματα τετριμμένων ἰδεῶν, ἀνέκαθεν παπαγάλιζε και παραφούσκωνε ὅ,τι τοῦ φαινόταν χρήσιμο γιά τό παρανοϊκό του σύστημα, ὅμως σ' αὐτὸ ἀκριβῶς έγκειται ἡ ἰδιοφυΐα, ἢ ἡ σατανικότητα, τῆς παραφροσύνης του, ἢ ἀκόμα καὶ ἡ ἐγκληματικότητά της – πείτε το ὅπως θέλετε, δῶστε ὅποια εξήγηση ἐπιθυμεῖτε: στὸ ὅτι χρησιμοποιεῖ ἀπαρεγκλίτως κάθε κλεμμένο ψῆγμα μὲ τέτοιον τρόπο ὥστε νὰ συνεπάρει τοὺς πρωτόγονους ἀνθρώπους, κι ἐπιπλέον να μεταμορφώσει πάλι σε ἄβουλα πρόβατα ἀκόμα καὶ ἀνθρώπους που διαθέτουν, ἢ μᾶλλον διέθεταν, μιὰ κάποια ἱκανότητα σκέψης.»
[…]
«Ἔτσι προέκυψε η φράση μὲ τὴν «ψυχὴ τοῦ ἔθνους ποὺ βράζει ἀπό ὀργή» [ die kochende Volksseele]. Βέβαια, ἡ ἔκφραση αὐτὴ δὲν φτιάχτηκε γιὰ διαρκή χρήση, ἐνῶ οἱ λέξεις «αυθόρμητος» [ spontan ] καὶ «ἔνστικτο» [Instinkt] ποὺ εἶχαν ἀρχίσει να γίνονται τῆς μόδας ἐκείνη τὴν ἐποχή, ἀπέκτησαν μόνιμη θέση στὴ ΓΤΡ – καὶ ἰδίως τὸ «ἔνστικτο» ποὺ ἔπαιξε κυρίαρχο ρόλο μέχρι τὸ τέλος. Ὁ ἀληθινὸς Τεύτονας ἀντιδρᾶ αὐθόρμητα ὅταν ξυπνᾶ τὸ ἔνστικτό του. Μετὰ τὴν 20ὴ Ἰουλίου τοῦ 1944, ὁ Γκαῖμπελς ἔγραψε ὅτι ἡ ἀπόπειρα δολοφονίας ἐναντίον τοῦ Φύρερ ἐξηγεῖται μόνον ὡς «ὑπερκέραση τῶν δυνάμεων τοῦ ἐνστίκτου ἀπὸ τὶς δυνάμεις μιᾶς διαβολικῆς νόησης». Ἐδῶ λοιπὸν βλέπουμε την προτίμηση τῆς ΓΤΡ γιὰ ὁτιδήποτε συναισθηματικὸ καὶ ἐνστικτῶδες ὡς ἀξίωμα: Τὸ κοπάδι τῶν κριαριῶν μὲ τὸ ἰσχυρό τους ἔνστικτο ἀκολουθεῖ τὸν ἀρχικρίαρο, ἀκόμα κι ὅταν αὐτὸς πέφτει στη θάλασσα (ἤ, ὅπως στον Rabelais, ὅταν τὸν πετᾶνε στὴ θάλασσα – γιατὶ ποιός μπορεῖ νὰ ξέρει σὲ ποια βαθμὸ ὁ Χίτλερ ρίχτηκε αυτοβούλως σ' αὐτὸ τὸ λουτρὸ τοῦ αἵματος την 1η Σεπτεμβρίου τοῦ 1939, και σε ποιό βαθμὸ τὸν ἐξώθησαν τὰ προηγούμενα λάθη καὶ τὰ ἐγκλήματά του νὰ ἀναλάβει αὐτὸ τὸ παρανοϊκὸ ἐγχείρημα;).»
[…]
«ἡ μελωδία τοῦ ἐμβατήριου, ἐπιτυγχάνεται πιὸ εὔκολα ἀπ' ὅ,τι στὴν περίπτωση τῆς ὁμαδικῆς ἀπαγγελίας, διότι στο τραγούδι, στὴ μελωδία, συναντώνται κάθε λογής διαθέσεις, ἐνῶ σὲ λόγια ποὺ ἐκφέρονται ἀπὸ κοινοῦ πρέπει ἐντὸς τῆς ὁμάδας νὰ συγκλίνουν οἱ σκέψεις. Ἡ ὁμαδικὴ ἀπαγγελία εἶναι κάτι πιὸ τεχνητό, πιὸ ἐπεξεργασμένο, καὶ διαλαλεῖ τὸ σκοπό της πιο βίαια ἀπ' ὅσο τὸ τραγούδι.»
[…]
«Καὶ γιατί πήγατε φυλακή;», ρώτησα.
«Ε, ἀπὸ κάτι ἐκφράσεις...» [wejen Ausdrücken ], εἶπε. (Είχε προσβάλει τὸν Φύρερ καὶ τὰ σύμβολα καὶ τοὺς θεσμοὺς τοῦ Τρίτου Ράιχ.) Αὐτὸ στάθηκε για μένα ἡ ἀποκάλυψη. Ἡ φράση που μοῦ ἄνοιξε τὰ μάτια. «Από κάτι ἐκφράσεις». Αὐτὸς ἦταν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ σκοπὸς ποὺ ἔγραφα τὰ ἡμερολόγιά μου. Ἤθελα νὰ διαχωρίσω τὸ κοντάρι τῆς ἰσορροπίας ἀπὸ τὰ χίλια δυὸ ἄλλα πράγματα, καὶ νὰ σκιτσάρω μαζὶ μ' αὐτὸ καὶ τὰ χέρια ποὺ τὸ κρατοῦσαν. Ἔτσι γεννήθηκε αὐτὸ τὸ βιβλίο - ὄχι ἀπὸ ματαιοδοξία, ἀλλά, νά, γιὰ κάτι ἐκφράσεις.»

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Cliches take hold of us."

LTI = Lingua Tertii Imperii

I knew I had a good reason for being wary of hashtags.

This is a difficult book to summarize, but let's just say that Victor Klemperer takes a very close look at the language used during the twelve years of "the thousand-year Reich" (including phrases like that one); the way that the limits of that language, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, became for millions of people the limits of the world; and the way that, even with Hitler's defeat, the LTI lingered on in its human hosts. Which I suppose is true of any kind of cult; physically leaving it is one thing, but un-learning the patterns of thought you've been indoctrinated with, through the medium of language, is another.

Klemperer proposes a number of other characteristics of the LTI that seem notable, especially the recurrence of superlatives; the passage of "fanatic" [fanatisch] from pejorative to laudatory; and the difficulty experienced by young kids even after the war in imagining the word "heroic" [heroisch] applying to something that isn't done while wearing a uniform. There were some then-new terms that remain familiar even to us non-German speakers, like blitzkrieg; some not-so-familiar terms (at least not to me) like gleichschalten [to force into line], which accrording to Klemperer reveals the Nazi tendency "to mechanize and automate human beings"; and words that developed new connotations in the LTI, such as weltanschauung (apparently common enough in English that spellcheck isn't going to bitch at me about it), which according to Klemperer suggests "the insight [das Schauen], the vision [die Schau] of the mystic, i.e. the vision [Sehen] of the inner eye, the intuition and revelation of religious ecstasy." Chapter 18, "I Believe in Him", emphasizes that last point- the characteristic injunction of the LTI to look beyond "mere" rationality, to some non-empirical, mystical truth. As Klemperer remembers an acquaintance he'd always been on good terms with telling him,

"...everything you are asking is based on reason...it's something you have to feel, and you must abandon yourself to your feelings, and you must always focus on the Fuhrer's greatness, rather than the discomfort which you are experiencing at present..."

Klemperer thinks that another characteristic of the LTI is needless obfuscation:

Every autodidact shows off with foreign words, and somehow they always manage to take their revenge on him. But one would be doing the Fuhrer an injustice if one were to explain his fondness for foreign words solely in terms of vanity and an awareness of his own shortcomings. What Hitler knows frighteningly well...is the psyche of the...masses, who are to be kept from thinking at all costs. A foreign word impresses all the more the less it is understood; in not being comprehended, it confuses and stupefies and, in addition, drowns out thought.

My friend Billy already quoted from this page in his review , but I think the point is worth reiterating. And if clarity doesn't sound like an ambitious enough goal for the use of language, try it sometime. It's not that easy (just read a few of my reviews).

Maybe there's a very general lesson here: be careful with language. Of course, this is a lot easier said than done, as Klemperer no doubt understood better than I do, especially because something like the LTI, when you are living and breathing it, becomes so encompassing that it's almost impossible to recognize it as merely one language or ideology among many- it poses as immutable reality. I do have one small suggestion, though: maybe instead of communicating exclusively through other people's words and opinions in the form of internet memes, for example, we should try to express ourselves to whatever extent possible in our own words- clumsy, inapt or inelegant as they may be.

And speaking of being careful with language, it's probably not a good idea to go around comparing everything to a virus these days, but there is something about this study that invites that comparison as well. Just as in the case of the coronavirus, you can be infected with the LTI (or who knows, maybe some modern variant) and not even realize it. "The language of the victor...", as Klemperer puts it, "...you don't speak it with impunity, you breathe it in and live according to it."

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update: Klemperer on the connection between Romanticism and the Nazis.

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...


First post on this book:

To set the scene: Klemperer was one of the Jews to survive WWII in Germany because he was married to an Aryan. Prior to Hitler, he was an academic in the field of literature and, having been forced out of his job, he kept detailed diary notes on how language was used under the Nazis in Germany. It was his way of trying to deal with the situation he was in, utilising his linguistic talents for a far greater cause than his academic work would ever be able to do.

This volume is only part of his published diaries of the period and, as will be evident from the name, is concerned with a specific aspect. I can only imagine how horrifying the others must be. As is always the case, reading small details of one person’s life can be moving in a way large statistics fail to be. We see him in his university being hit on the head over and over with a book by a German academic because he could. A person who reads books for a living, physically assaulting another person with a book because he can. Being forced to kill their cat because the Nazis decided that Jews couldn’t have pets. His angry bewilderment as he watches nice non-Jewish Germans explaining that Hitler is for the best. His even angrier perplexity that he has Jewish friends saying the same thing.

Rest here:

http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...

[Malte · Rating 5 out of 5]

In seinem Tagebuch hielt Victor Klemperer zur Zeit des Nationalsozialimus - um besser zu verstehen, aber auch, um sich selbst mit einer gewohnten und geliebten Tätigkeit vor dem Verzagen zu retten - die spezifischen Spracheigenheiten des NS-Regimes fest und untersuchte diese, seiner ursprünglichen Profession folgend, philologisch.
Neben diesen philologischen Untersuchungen stehen immer wieder auch Anekdoten und Reflexionen, welche das Buch zu einem enorm authentischen und auch warmherzigen Dokument machen.
Keine Überraschung, aber dennoch erschreckend, ist die Aktualität von Klemperers Beobachtungen - es findet sich heute viel Analoges zur LTI:
„Sprache des Siegers… man spricht sie nicht ungestraft, man atmet sie ein und lebt ihr nach.“

Interessant war die Lektüre von Klemperer auch in Kombination mit der französischen Sprachphilosophie, im Besonderen mit Derrida. Auch dieser geht ja - wie Klemperer - davon aus, dass die Sprache viele Symptome einer metaphysischen Vereinfachung und Teleologie aufweist. Dieses metaphysische Element der Sprache erschwert ein Denken der Differenz ungemein, welches aber notwendig wäre, um totalitäre Strukturen zu vermeiden.
Ganz ähnlich formuliert Klemperer:
„Was jemand willentlich verbergen will, sei es nur vor andern, sei es vor sich selber, auch was er unbewußt in sich trägt: die Sprache bringt es an den Tag. Das ist wohl auch der Sinn der Sentenz: le style c’est l’homme; die Aussagen eines Menschen mögen verlogen sein – im Stil seiner Sprache liegt sein Wesen hüllenlos offen.“

Nach Derrida ist die Metaphysik mit einer Bevorzugung des Gesprochenem vor der Schrift verbunden, da die Rede den Anschein eines klaren Kontextes und einer klaren Adressierung mit sich bringt. Im Gegensatz dazu stehe bei den Metaphysikern die Schrift, die, sobald sie einmal verfasst ist, eigenständig wird und sich an keinen festen Kontext oder Adressaten mehr binden lässt. Dies ist den Philosophen der Präsenz, den Metaphysikern, unheimlich.
Vor diesem Hintergrund ist folgende Feststellung Klemperers äußerst ineressant:

„Die absolute Herrschaft, die das Sprachgesetz der winzigen Gruppe, ja des einen Mannes [Goebbels] ausübte, erstreckte sich über den gesamten deutschen Sprachraum mit um so entschiedenerer Wirksamkeit, als die LTI keinen Unterschied zwischen gesprochener und geschriebener Sprache kannte. Vielmehr: alles in ihr war Rede, mußte Anrede Anruf, Aufpeitschung sein. Zwischen den Reden und den Aufsätzen des Propagandaministers gab es keinerlei stilistischen Unterschied, weswegen sich denn auch seine Aufsätze so bequem deklamieren ließen.“
Und etwas später: „[…] das Gefühl des Hörers (und Goebbels Publikum ist immer Hörer, auch wenn es die Zeitungsaufsätze des Doktors liest) […]“

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Victor Klemperer is famous today for his diaries covering the Nazi era in Germany. But those were published in 1995, thirty-five years after his death. The only book he published in his lifetime was this one, in 1947: "The Language of the Third Reich". Its original title, "Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen" (i.e., Notebook of a Philologist), with the Latin evoking Imperial Rome, is more precise and informative, but I suppose we’re too uneducated today for that title to be used. Either way, this book is fascinating in its description of the twisting of language by the Nazis, who, like all ideologues, turned words to their own ends of power.

The book is not easy to read. In part this is because for someone who does not read German, the distinctions and derivations Klemperer draws among German words are not necessarily obvious or easily comprehensible in translation. In part this is because the book consists largely of excerpts from Klemperer’s famous diaries, strung together with narrative and comment, creating a somewhat choppy feel. Moreover, it is very difficult to understand many of Klemperer’s references without first knowing details of his life, such as that he was Protestant (though considered a Jew by the Nazis), married to an “Aryan” woman. Thus, he survived until 1945, and escaped the final cull of Jews in Dresden by the chance occurrence of the firebombing of that city in 1945, which allowed him to reinvent himself as Aryan in the chaos. I know these details because Klemperer’s story features heavily in Richard Evans’s "The Third Reich in Power" (in which I first heard of this book), but someone without that knowledge would find much of this book very confusing. The footnotes help a little, translating Klemperer’s causal use of acronyms, such as DAF for Deutsche Arbeitsfront, or Pgs for Parteigenossen (party members). But someone coming blind to this book might find it a tough road.

Despite Klemperer’s background as a philologist, "The Language of the Third Reich" is not an academic attempt to analyze Nazi use of language. The sources that would have allowed Klemperer to write such an analysis at the time he wrote his diaries were wholly forbidden to him. Rather, Klemperer offers mostly contemporaneous impressions of Nazi language, and its implications for individuals and society, using the scholarly tools he used throughout his life. Those tools were ideal ones, because his primary academic focus was languages (in his diaries he often complains bitterly of how the Nazis barred even private continuation of his work on eighteenth-century French literature). In fact, a more academic approach would probably have severely crimped the power of the book.

The Language of the Third Reich was published before George Orwell’s 1984, but Klemperer’s description of the purpose of the LTI, as he calls it throughout (Lingua Tertii Imperii), is essentially the same as that of Newspeak. “The sole purpose of the LTI is to strip everyone of their individuality, to paralyse them as personalities, to make them into unthinking and docile cattle in a herd driven and hounded in a particular direction, to turn them into atoms in a huge rolling block of stone. The LTI is the language of mass fanaticism.” This affected all Germans, including those Germans not favorably disposed to the Nazis, as Klemperer shows with numerous examples. That’s the overarching theme of the book, but several other themes recur throughout the book as Klemperer weaves together discussions of specific uses of language with his diary entries.

One such theme is how concepts that had always been communicated using specific words were replaced by more obscure (very rarely new) words that better comported with Nazi ideology. So, for example, the word kriegerisch (warlike) was largely replaced, and the usage expanded, by kämpferisch (aggressive or belligerent), meant both as compliment and command. Tied to this was a more general repurposing or refocusing of words, as in how the word fanatsich (fanatic), originally always used in a negative sense, was remade to be used as a positive modifier, and the more so the worse the war went for Germany. Or, more darkly, the use of the word abgewandert (gone away) by the postal service for mail returned to sender because it had been addressed to Jews transported to death camps—not a new usage, but one with new meaning, of which everybody was aware, but to which nobody publicly adverted. Along the same lines, superlatives were used constantly, and used more and more the later it got in the war. All these words and usages rose and fell with the fortunes of the regime; Blitzkrieg soon disappeared entirely, for example, but the same was true of many other words, as the needs of the Nazi regime changed, or the strategic situation changed.

It wasn’t just popular language, either. In the legal system, for example, the Nazis exalted Rechtsempfinden (the sense of justice), and denigrated the traditional usage of Rechtsdenken (the concept of justice). The Nazis spoke “never of a sense of justice on its own, rather always of a ‘healthy sense of justice.’ And healthy meant whatever accorded with the will and interest of the Party.” (Sebastian Haffner’s outstanding "Defying Hitler" covers the corruption of the legal profession under the Nazis in much more detail, but along the exact same lines.) Erosion of the rule of law in favor of making legal determinations through ideologically and emotionally charged feelings is the technique of all ideologues; it is, of course, a major characteristic of today’s American Left (as I outline in my review of Haffner’s book).

Another sub-theme is the addiction to sports analogies, much favored by Goebbels in his frequent radio addresses. Mostly this meant boxing and racing analogies, the former because it was kämpferisch, the latter because it was futuristic and technological (as also noted by Wolfgang Schivelbusch in his Three New Deals). Klemperer’s book contains a fascinating bit of historical anti-knowledge here. In the 1936 Olympics, held in Berlin, it is often said that Hitler was annoyed at the triumphs of the American Jesse Owens, because he was black, and thereby Nazi theories of racial superiority were disproved in a way that publicly and dramatically humiliated the Nazis. But Klemperer says in passing that the Nazi regime, “in accordance with its whole outlook—which places physical prowess on a level with intellectual achievement, or rather above it—it surrounds the Olympics with an incredible splendor, to the extent that for an instant even racial differences are forgotten in the glitter . . . the high jump of a black American is celebrated as if the leap had been achieved by an Aryan and Nordic man.” That seems to contradict the usual parable of the 1936 Olympics.

Digging into this, it is easy to learn that the idea that the Nazis were displeased by Owens was simply a projection by Americans, eager to claim a humiliation for the Nazis, when none existed. Owens himself said that Hitler had to leave before the awards ceremony, but acknowledged him by waving at him as he left (and some claim to have also seen him shaking Owens’s hand). No German newspaper treated Owens’s success (or that of other African Americans, such as the actual high jump champion—Owens was a runner) as a repudiation of Nazi doctrine. The Germans were just indifferent. In fact, the only rejection of Owens by a prominent politician was by—Franklin Roosevelt, who not only refused to see him, but refused to even send a message of congratulation. And the rest of Owens’s life was fairly harsh, due to American racism. The inconvenience of these facts for Americans, and especially for the modern Democratic Party, is doubtless why this cloud of falsehood has been maintained. Of course, it’s not like Nazis were enlightened racially—their indifference to people of African origin is easily explained by their rarity in the Europe of the time. In fact, my mother tells the story of how as a young girl, a Hungarian refugee in 1945, living in a Bavarian village, her family made a trip to the next village just to see a black American soldier, whom they called the “Saracen,” because his skin color was such a novelty. No doubt if there were more black people in Germany, the Nazis would have been just as racist toward them as was Franklin Roosevelt, and the rest of white America at the time. But the fact remains that the story we’re usually told, of American joy at the blow against German racism struck by Jesse Owens, is a complete lie, built up to serve modern-day political purposes.

It is also interesting that Klemperer sometimes shows gaps in his knowledge, that might not have showed up in a book written with the benefit of years of reflection. Jews were forbidden from attending Nazi speeches or even listening to them on the radio. (True, Klemperer could have listened prior to 1933, and presumably also in the early years of the Nazi regime, but he seems not to have done so, probably because he was not interested in politics.) So Klemperer’s belief was that Hitler’s speeches were simply “convulsive screaming” where he “shouted down opponents.” Therefore, he couldn’t understand why anyone was convinced by Hitler. This sells short Hitler’s noted oratorical ability, which did contain such passages, but always preceded by buildup and followed by cathartic winddown that drew his listeners in. Hitler was nearly universally believed to be a fantastic orator, and it wasn’t just mass self-hypnosis, as uncompelling as his speeches seem today. Klemperer just lacked the whole picture, something we find hard to comprehend given the ubiquity of television and video today.

Other interesting bits of knowledge pop up, as they often do when reading contemporaneous writings about events we usually view through decades of later writings. Klemperer notes the Nazi appropriation of Christian words and rituals for Nazi purposes (while noting that “from the very outset National Socialism fought against Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular”). These ranged from ceremonial recognition of martyrs, the parading of relics, and the constant use of ewig (eternal), to the encouragement of idolatrous treatment of Hitler, where non-Nazi Germans would repeat to Klemperer, when queried about some disaster or horror, only that “I believe in him.” Klemperer also offers an unpopular opinion about Zionism—namely, that “it is undoubtedly the case that Nazi doctrine was repeatedly stimulated and enriched by Zionism.” In fact, he draws extensive parallels between the language of Theodor Herzl and Hitler—not that he blames Herzl for Nazism, or thinks he did other than mean well, but Zionism held no appeal for Klemperer, who was German through and through.

It is worth remembering that when Klemperer published this book he was living in Communist East Germany, where he had chosen to return (that is, to what was then the Soviet Zone) after the war, and where he had joined the Party and was later lionized by the East German regime. Apparently the third volume of his diaries, covering the postwar years, is somewhat critical of Communism, but far more critical, in an incoherent fashion, of the West. Nowhere here does Klemperer compare and contrast Communist mutation of language with Nazi mutation, which would have been a fascinating and valuable exercise. Quite the contrary—he bizarrely exalts Communist twisting of language as wonderful and clarifying. In one section, he claims that “the wealth of new technical terms [under Communism in Russia] testifies to something diametrically opposed to what it reveals about Hitler’s Germany: it points to the weapons employed in the battle for the liberation of the mind.” He them compounds this glaring and sycophantic error with “It is absolutely essential that we learn about the true spirit of different nations . . . we have been told more lies about Russia than any other. . . . . Gleichshalten (coordination) and Ingenieur der Seele (engineer of the soul)—both are technical expressions, but while the German metaphor points to slavery, the Russian one points to freedom.” I suppose, given his experiences, one can forgive Klemperer this ingenuousness, if that is what it is, but to any rational and informed person, this is vomitous.

Of course, the spirit of the LTI continues today among all modern ideologues; it’s just that most ideologues don’t have the grip over their society that the Nazis did, so the total impact is less. We see flashes of the LTI in the propagandistic plasticity of today’s leftist cant, most notably in areas where reality is denied by the Left but their view forced down on normal people by their control of the levers of education and culture (or what currently goes by that name). Thus, rather than “mutilation of the mentally ill,” we are told that we must use the new term “gender confirmation surgery.” Marriage is redefined to be something totally new, and we are told this is “marriage equality,” rather than forced identical treatment of things wholly different. Or, a less obviously propagandistic usage, we witness the forced use of “she” instead of “he” as the generic pronoun in all writing, claiming that it’s just a technical change, or mere fairness, when the real reason is to remedy fictional oppression, change modes of thought to coerce believing in that fictional oppression, and identify who is an enemy of the new regime. And here, just like the LTI, one forced shift in language is quickly followed by another, as we see that new usage now being mandatorily replaced by “they,” something ungrammatical, jarring, and conveying less, rather than more, information. I, at least, won’t use either stupid construction, in this life or the next.

All this is tied closely to the Left’s demand that reason be replaced by emotivism. As Klemperer says, and we can say just as well of today’s parallels to the LTI, “The insistence on the emotional is always encouraged by the LTI.” But “[e]motion was not itself the be-all and end-all, it was only a means to an end, a step in a particular direction. Emotion had to suppress the intellect and itself surrender to a state of numbing dullness without the freedom of will or feeling; how else would one have got hold of the necessary crown of executioners and torturers?” “The language of the victor . . . you don’t speak it with impunity, you breathe in it and live according to it.” Which raises the question—are we going to let the modern Left be the victors, in language or anything else? I sure hope not.

But on reflection, I don’t think that’s the right question. They won’t be victors, because they can’t be victors. It is increasingly obvious, despite surface appearances, that the behaviors of the modern Left are merely epiphenomena, the spastic dying lights of a dying political system, Enlightenment liberalism. The question, therefore, is not how to be victorious over the Left. It will defeat itself, as does, ultimately, anything that consistently and broadly denies reality, though it certainly doesn’t hurt, and is enjoyable and beneficial to mankind, to hasten the process of defeat. The question, rather, is what will replace it—some chthonic horror, the bastard descendant of the twin nightmares of the twentieth century, Nazism and Communism? Or (my preference, of course), a new/old system, grounded in the real, and focused on human flourishing, as well as on human accomplishment?

It’s likely to be one or the other, since liberalism is definitively played out, and given the limits of human nature, nothing truly wholly new is likely to show up. (The Singularity, strong artificial intelligence, and other forms of creating new humans and new human societies are pure fantasy.) I suppose there is a third possibility—that our culture could permanently collapse into a puddle, a mediocrity no different than almost all cultures outside the West have always been in world history—lacking in real achievements, extractive of their people, and, to the extent they today have any positive aspects, derivative of the accomplishments of the West. Maybe collapse, combined with immersive virtual reality, will lead to permanent global degradation. An unpleasant thought. But I will bet that the eternal Western verities of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome, as filtered through Christendom, would ultimately be reborn. Not, of course, that such a rebirth will necessarily take place in the West, or even involving any people currently of the West, since after all we are not having any children. Just as likely it will be some group of people who do have children, who adopt and inherit the magic of the West, as did the Franks and the Magyars. Maybe all those North Africans swamping Europe will adopt a better religion and a better culture—though if something like that happens, it could take a long time. But whoever grabs the brass ring, that someone do so is my goal, preferably now, not later, but either way thereby creating a new thing built on the wisdom of the old.

[Stephen Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a world of mass communication and constant connection (or constant noise depending on your point of view), too little attention is being paid to exactly what we are saying and how we are saying it. I found that focus, the attention paid to the little details, the "single words, idioms, and sentence structures", to be the driving theme of this book. And quite frankly - it's terrifying. Victor Klemperer's investigation into the Lingua Tertii Imperii may cause one to think twice before opening one's mouth. The role of language in politics, social life, and even internal contemplation can not be overstated. Seemingly innocent phrases or expressions have underlying meanings and persuasions, always nudging the speaker and the listener a little this way or a little that way; and Klemperer was in no short supply of cliches, slogans, and propaganda. I think the argument can be made that neither are we. Now I wouldn't be so bold as to attempt to liken Klemperer's circumstances to our own, because Klemperer witnessed things and experience things that I cannot even imagine. However, I think his methodology, his careful dissection of the language of the media, the state, the people, and even himself, can bear much fruit today. Side note - Klemperer's description of the machinations used by Goebbels throughout the Hitler regime, in my opinion, reinforces Hannah Arendt's general conclusion in Eichmann in Jerusalem about the nature of Nazi rule. It started and ended with the language, the slogans and taglines that one can fall back on when thinking becomes too cumbersome.

A difficult aspect of this book - I don't speak German and am not a philologist of any sort, so there were sections that were beyond me. Specifically, when he traces the journey of certain German words and expressions throughout history to how they became Nazified. I can understand how that happens within a language, but some of his examples were too buried in the German language for me to fully appreciate.

In summary, this book should be read by anyone who wishes to avoid becoming an automaton; or who hopes to fortify themselves against various forms of propaganda from Left and Right; or who desires to see just how easy it is for well-meaning, educated people to fall prey to manipulation and control, specifically through language. I know that at the very least my eyes have been (re)opened, and I've once again realized that I am not immune to the maladies of my age, the perversion of language being one of the most insidious.

[Patrick Tobin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of Klemperer's diaries - in fact, they're some of my favorite books. I remember reading notes for the LTI in the diaries, and only just now got around to buying it.

I wish I'd read it sooner. I think it's brilliant, but I felt hampered by not knowing German. I think it would have been a lot more powerful, regardless of how wonderful the translation is.

That said, there were a couple of sections that gave me goose pimples, mainly because they are so completely relevant to today.

Writing about the Nazi's fixation with being 'of the people':

"Since 1933 I have known incontrovertibly something I had suspected to be the case and not wanted to admit, namely that it is easy to cultivate such a plus peuple qu'ailleurs ['of the people':] anywhere; and I also know that a part of every intellectual's soul belongs to the people, that all my awareness of being lied to, and my critical attentiveness, are of no avail when it comes to it: at some point the printed lie will get the better of me when it attacks from all sides and is queried by fewer and fewer around me and finally by no one at all."

Wow. Change "printed lie" to "media" and it could've been written within the last 9 years.

There's also the fetishization by the Nazis of common folk, farmers, people outside the cities. Just like Sarah Palin.

"It was apparent to him as the Fuhrer that the people could only be got controlled by working on their emotions. 'Does a bourgeois intellectual understand the first thing about the people' he writes in his diaries."

Hello Fox News.

Our right wing is not the Nazi party (I hate when the left or the right throw out this label). But our right wing does share this: an understanding of how to manipulate language (liberal=anti-american; intellectual=elitist) to its benefit.

[Coloma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesantísimo conocimiento el de este libro. Klemperer expone claramente el potente arma que les supone a los regímenes el lenguaje, la manipulación y la apropiación del mismo. Además, nos va contando anécdotas y situaciones propias vividas. Un libro básico para los amantes del período de la 2GM y del lenguaje y el conocimiento. 📝 "Muchas palabras del habla nazi deberían ser enterradas por mucho tiempo — algunas para siempre — en una fosa común" 📝 "El lenguaje no sólo crea y piensa por mí, sino que guía a la vez mis emociones, dirige mi personalidad psíquica, tanto más cuanto mayores son la naturalidad y la inconsciencia con que me entrego a él".

[Jacques le fataliste et son maître · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mi pare notevole, in questo libro, il modo in cui le riflessioni sulla degenerazione subita dalla lingua tedesca durante il nazismo si alternano alle fugaci testimonianze delle violenze quotidiane, delle sconfortanti manifestazioni di ottusità ideologica di cui si rendono protagoniste le persone meno sospettabili – manifestazioni dell’impoverimento del discorso pubblico sui mezzi di informazione e del dialogo (politico, culturale) fra le persone. Un appiattimento della lingua e delle idee in parte pianificato con accuratezza e usando gli strumenti della modernità, mediante l’imposizione di “parole d’ordine”, modi di dire ecc. propri del regime, ma in parte anche frutto delle radici culturali del nazismo, alla cui analisi l’autore dedica pagine davvero stimolanti. In particolare ho trovato affascinante l’analisi riservata ai rapporti fra nazismo e romanticismo, con la sua provocatoria conclusione: «tutto ciò che costituisce il nazismo è già contenuto in germe nel romanticismo: la detronizzazione della ragione, la riduzione dell’uomo ad animale, l’esaltazione del concetto di potenza, del predatore, della bestia bionda… Ma questa non è una terribile accusa nei confronti proprio della corrente di pensiero cui l’arte e la letteratura tedesca (nel senso più ampio del termine) sono debitrici di valori tanto elevati? L’accusa rimane, a buon diritto, nonostante tutti i valori creati dal romanticismo: ‘Voliamo alto e perciò cadiamo tanto più in basso’. Il carattere fondamentale del momento culturale più tipicamente tedesco è l’assenza di limiti».
La riflessione dell’autore, sempre muovendo dall’analisi di apparenti minuzie terminologiche sparse nella quotidianità (titoli di giornali, slogan commerciali, necrologi, targhe in cui si fissa il nome e la funzione di locali pubblici ecc.) coglie l’essenza del nazismo: «il peccato capitale di avere, con cosciente menzogna, trasferito nella sfera del sentimento quanto è soggetto alla ragione e di aver fatto una consapevole opera di deformazione utilizzando le nebulosità del sentimento».
Diventa quasi un’ossessione per l’autore svelare il segreto del fascino esercitato dal nazismo sui tedeschi, soprattutto alla luce del suicidio intellettuale praticato da tanti suoi connazionali. Come l’ex allievo dell’autore, ritrovato al termine del conflitto, fra le macerie della Germania distrutta, che confesserà: «‘Non posso negarlo, ho creduto in lui [Hitler]’. ‘Ma è impossibile che continui a crederci ancora; vede bene dove ci ha portati il regime, e tutti i terribili crimini che ha commesso ora sono sotto gli occhi di tutti’. […] ‘Tutto questo lo ammetto. Ma sono gli altri che lo hanno frainteso, che lo hanno tradito. In lui, in LUI, io continuo a credere’». Di fronte a fenomeni di esaltazione religiosa di questo genere, è facile capire perché l’autore ritenesse vitale comprendere il senso di ciò che stava accadendo.

[Meaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sort of combination memoir and philology book. The author undertakes a serious study of language in Nazi Germany, but that study is part and parcel of his own experience living as a Jew in Dresden, and he includes many anecdotes about his own experiences. I admit I'm not into philology -- okay, I had to look up the word in the dictionary -- and I only read the book because Klemperer kept talking about it in his diaries. And in turn he talks about his diaries a lot in this book. So they compliment each other, although they can and do stand on their own as well.

I was intrigued, sometimes fascinated, by Klemperer's observations of how language evolved under Nazism. An example: readers of concentration camp memoirs will be familiar with the camp term "organize," meaning "to steal." Well, according to Klemperer, the ordinary German also used the term "organize" meaning to obtain something illegally, either by theft or black marketing -- that is, "They don't issue ration cards for that anymore, you'll have to organize it." I had no idea the same term was used outside the camps -- and Klemperer, it appears, had no idea it was used within the camps, because he doesn't mention it.

I think he would have been very intrigued by 1984 and Newspeak. I also think that if I applied his methods of observation to the media and conversation in my country, I would probably learn some disquieting things.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in language, the Holocaust or World War II. I would also recommend Klemperer's diaries, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941, I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945: A Diary of the Nazi Years and the post-war one, The Lesser Evil: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945-1959. Especially the first two.

[trovateOrtensia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Un'epoca si esprime attraverso il suo linguaggio.
(...) Le parole possono essere come minime dosi di arsenico: ingerite senza saperlo sembrano non avere alcun effetto, ma dopo qualche tempo ecco rivelarsi l'effetto tossico. Se per un tempo sufficientemente lungo al posto di eroico e virtuoso si dice "fanatico", alla fine si crederà veramente che un fanatico sia un eroe pieno di virtù e che non possa esserci un eroe senza fanatismo".
Un libro illuminante e prezioso.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beware of superlatives. Beware of foreign words; "Every autodidact shows off with foreign words and somehow they always manage to take their revenge on him." Beware of sports metaphors. Real life isn't all that much like boxing it turns out. It's more like rodeo clowning if one haaaad to use a sports metaphor.

A very important work for those of us who see and hear the gradual changing of the language around us and know that something is amiss.

[Walpurga Krepper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein Muss für jeden, der sich mit den Nationalsozialisten auseinandersetzt. Die Analyse der nationalsozialistischen Sprache ist gespickt mit unzähligen Anekdoten aus Klemperers persönlichen Leben und gibt Einblick in das Leben eines jüdischen Universitätsprofessors.

[Alex Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, what we have here is a book about language use in Germany during the period of the Third Reich. The author was in a privileged position to observe that particular subject, in that he was highly intelligent; had studied philosophy, Romance languages and German studies at a high level, and lived in Germany during that period. But also he was Jewish, and for various reasons was not incarcerated at any point on account of his ethnicity, so he was able to observe for the duration of the Reich how German people used language in everyday life, from the perspective of someone who did not share and did not want to share the Nazis’ way of looking at and thinking about the world. So, this is a book that tells us how Nazism pervaded ways of thinking and talking during that period, and what’s chilling and timely about it is that it doesn’t read like a book about a different time. Some of it seems disturbingly familiar.

Victor Klemperer (1881-1960) was Professor of Romance Languages at the Technical University of Dresden from 1920 to the mid-1930s. He was born into a Jewish family, but in 1903 he converted to Protestantism, then he reverted back to observing Judaism. Then, in 1912, he converted to Protestantism for the second time. In 1933, when the Nazis seized power in Germany, Klemperer was gradually forced out of his teaching job.

However, Klemperer’s wife Eva was, under the Nuremberg laws about racial purity, considered to be of “Aryan” origin, and as such he had some protection under the law. He couldn’t teach, and he and Eva were made to work as cleaners in order to earn barely enough food to survive, but despite the routine maltreatment and humiliation they and their fellow Jews were given by the Gestapo, the couple managed to eke out a bare living until February 1945, when they managed to escape to Allied-occupied territory.

This is about as much of Klemperer’s life as you need to know, in order to understand where this book is coming from. He kept a detailed diary of life in the Third Reich, which has since been published, and which is probably more famous than this book, although I haven’t read it. The Language of the Third Reich was originally published in 1947 as LTI, Notizbuch eines Philologen (LTI stands for ‘Lingua Tertii Imperii’, a somewhat ironical translation into Latin of the English title: the subtitle means ‘A Philologist’s Notebook’) and Klemperer, like Nietzsche, grounds his analysis of the thing he’s talking about in philology.

Klemperer is amazingly sensitive to nuance, and nuance is the first victim of what I’ll call, after him, LTI. The very first chapter, ‘Heroism (Instead of an Introduction)’, is about how after the war, he was involved in the process of educating young people who’d grown up knowing little but the Third Reich, and how they were all but unable to think of any kind of positive behaviour without automatically labeling it as ‘heroic’:

‘We spoke about the meaning of culture, of humanitarianism, of democracy and I had the impression that they were beginning to see the light, and that certain things were being straightened out in their willing minds -- and then, it was always just around the corner, someone spoke of some heroic behaviour or other, or of some heroic resistance, or simply of heroism per se. As soon as this concept was even touched upon, everything became blurred, and we were adrift once again in the fog of Nazism.’

Now, the very fact that on re-reading this passage I had to stop and think for a second about what Klemperer meant, goes to show that in the ten years since I first read this book, I too -- a middle-aged man with a college education -- have become so used to valuing any kind of good behaviour as ‘heroic’, that my own thinking about culture and democracy has become blunted by the way we have been habitually thinking about it over the past few years. The violently combative atmosphere that Klemperer describes, in which it’s routine to deny the full humanity of a person based on the politicians that they support, is the one we live in now, even if the politicians we vote for haven’t committed the crimes that the Nazis committed.

Elsewhere, Klemperer pays acute attention to ordinary words being used in extraordinary ways, and even punctuation: he has a whole albeit brief chapter on the Nazis’ ironic use of inverted commas to make their opponents look pathetically self-deluding (‘the Russian “strategy”’, ‘red “victories”, ‘the “research scientist” Albert Einstein’ -- any of this sound familiar from Twitter and comment sections?) One of the most pathetic and awful chapters, ‘I Believe In Him’, describes the process by which a cultured and intelligent assistant in Klemperer’s university goes from relatively apolitical liberalism to fervent faith in Hitler while still maintaining that it doesn’t mean that she can’t be a good friend to the Klemperers any more, because they just don’t understand:

‘She had in fact simply shaken her head in response to every sentence I uttered and had tears in her eyes. “No, it really does seem to be pointless, because everything you are asking is based on reason, and the accompanying feelings stem from bitterness about insignificant details.” - “And what are my questions supposed to be based on if not reason? And what is significant?” - “I’ve told you already: that we’ve really come home! It’s something you have to feel, and you must abandon yourself to your feelings, and you must always focus on the Führer’s greatness, rather than on the discomfort which you are experiencing at present.”’

This is the image that recurs through Klemperer’s great book: what it looks like when someone abandons rational thought and gives in to sheer blind faith in leadership.

And, to a certain extent, don’t most politicians encourage this, one way or another? Is this not the most lingering and most toxic legacy of the Nazis? Not a pathetic racist asshole murdering a woman MP in Yorkshire, or 168 people in Oklahoma City; and not Operation Reinhard, either. I’m thinking more about the joy of giving yourself up to a powerful cause that appeals to you on a gut level, without asking what you’re doing, and why, and what the cause can really do for you and those you care for, and what it will do for everyone you don’t care so much about; the joy of forgetting about nuance, and consequence, and compromise, and increment; the joy of rejecting politics, and demanding nothing less than victory.

Klemperer’s book is essential reading, in these times, because we seem to be forgetting everything he wanted to teach us. I can’t recommend it too highly.

[Mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Mein Tagebuch war in diesen Jahren immer wieder meine Balancierstange, ohne die ich hundertmal abgestürzt wäre.
In den Stunden des Ekels und der Hoffnungslosigkeit, in der endlosen Öde mechanischster Fabrikarbeit, an Kranken- und Sterbebetten, an Gräbern, in eigener Bedrängnis, in Momenten äußerster Schmach, bei physisch versagendem Herzen - immer half mir diese Forderung an mich selber: beobachte, studiere, präge dir ein, was geschieht - morgen sieht es schon anders aus, morgen fühlst du es schon anders; halte fest, wie es eben jetzt sich kundgibt und wirkt. Und sehr bald verdichtete sich dann dieser Anruf, mich über die Situation zu stellen und die innere Freiheit zu bewahren, zu der immer wirksamen Geheimformel: LTI, LTI!“

Wow, was für ein Buch! Ich habe lange daran gesessen, weil es sich nicht immer einfach dahin liest. Victor Klemperers sprachwissenschaftliche Analyse und Zeitzeugenbericht in Einem hat mich sehr berührt und inspiriert. An manchen Stellen merkt man, dass es ein Dokument seiner Zeit ist, doch immer wieder wirkt es auch so aktuell, dass einem eigentlich zum Weinen zu Mute ist.
Klemperer hat eine wunderbare Art zu erzählen und zu analysieren, die angesichts seiner immer wieder aussichtslos erscheinenden Lage während des Schreibprozesses nur bewundert werden kann.
Jetzt bin ich sehr bereit, noch mehr von ihm zu lesen und entsprechend gespannt auf seine Tagebücher!

[Priya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Original review on Tabula Rasa

Klemperer dedicates this book to his wife, and the crisp dedication ascertains the tone of the book - sincere, heartfelt, with the humourless smile of a survivor. He starts with the word heroic and its nazifierte meaning, how for a whole generation of Germans heroism wears a soldier's uniform. The LTI, as Klemperer calls it, breeds military-worship. Heavily romanticized words like heldenhaft (valient) and kämpferisch (gladiatorial) replace the more accurate and narrow kriegerisch (warlike.) Over and over he ironically quotes Schiller, calling the LTI a language that thinks and writes for you. A poison you inadvertently unthinkingly drink, that runs through your being.

In a chapter titled The Star, Klemperer states how from all the suffering in the twelve years of hell, the single worst day for the Jews was 19 September 1941, when it was made compulsory to wear the Jewish star. Over the following chapters, The Jewish War, The Jewish Spectacles and The language of the victor, Klemperer describes with growing despair how the LTI enters the speech of those who on the face of it don't support the Nazis and even the Jews, how no one escapes the constant venom that has no antidote.

"In the evening I was on air raid protection duty; the route to the Aryan control room passed just a couple of metres from my seat. While I was reading a book the Frederick the Great enthusiast called out 'Heil Hitler!' as she walked past. The next morning she came up to me and said in a kind tone, 'Forgive me for saying "Heil Hitler" yesterday; I was in a hurry and I mistook you for someone I was supposed to greet in that way.'

None of them were Nazis, but they were all poisoned."

Kemperer calls the Nazified German a language of faith. He reflects on how, in those days, people would express not a leidenschaftlichen (passionate) belief in things but a fanatischen (fanatic) as if fanaticism were a pleasant mix of courage and loyalty. In I believe in him, one of the best chapters of the book, he notes speeches where Hitler calls himself the German saviour, demanding this exalted status from his followers. Excessively used in the National Socialist vocabulary are words that radiate an aura of permanence, like einmalig (unique,) historisch (historic) and ewig (eternal). It is as if the Third Reich were not only unprecedented but infallible, even holy. Klemperer says, "Nazism was accepted by millions as gospel because it appropriated the language of the gospel."

And then he talks about the people, the cult of followers. The prefix 'Volk-' enters the LTI vocabulary - Volksfest, Volksgemeinschaft, Volksseele, the people's festival, the people's community, the people's soul and even today we still have the people's car. Klemperer talks about the Nazi leadership herding its followers like cattle. Every message must be simplified and the bold underlined golden rule is not to let the Volk think critically. One direct consequence of this is the introduction of foreign terms into the language. An impressive defamieren (to defame) kicks out the German schlechtmachen (to run down.) The LTI prefers using Terror and Invasion to their German equivalents. Foreign words are scarier, they stupefy and drown out thought.

In the beginning, Klemperer's diary entries bleed a steady against-all-odds optimism, soon a weary hope and finally you find him clinging on to his intellectual instinct as some form of strict self-preservation. Through the book, he attempts to trace the roots of Nazism, muses on his experiences in the First War, on patriotism, fascism, Zionism, race, identity and ideas that were once exotic and largely impersonal. He mentions how as a boy the term 'concentration camp' sounded colonial to him, utterly un-German, and wonders whether it will now forever be associated with Hitler's regime.

Klemperer analyses every aspect of the politics of language in a methodical Orwellian fashion. I mentioned the irony already and the humourless smile, that is the pull of his writing. He shares many experiences he had, people he met and was in correspondence with over the years; some bring up terrifying images and others helpless sympathy, most incidents left me shaking in disbelief. But he says it all with this recurring clever dark comedy that made me feel at once intrusive and small, and overcome with awe. I'll leave you with one of the early entries, dated 12 August 1935 -

I received from the Bls the first news since they emigrated. I find it very depressing: I am envious of these people's freedom (...) - and instead of just being happy they complain about seasickness and being homesick for Europe. I have knocked off a few lines of verse to send them:

Thank the Lord with all your might
For furnishing your means of flight
Across the sea from grief and fright -
To where your woes are truly small;
To spew a little in the sea
From a ship that cruises free
Is hardly worth a word at all.
Lift your weary eyes to view
The Southern Cross beyond the blue;
Far from all the woes of the Jew
Your ship has bridged the ocean.
Do you yearn for Europe's shore?
It greets you in the tropics more
For Europe is a notion!

[Signe Mežinska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neticami, cik mūsdienīga var būt 1947. gadā pirmoreiz iznākusi grāmata. Klemperers dokumentē un analizē Trešā reiha valodu, un es ceru, ka kaut kur Krievijā šobrīd kāds līdzīgi dokumentē krievu kara propagandas valodu. Jo ir notikumi un laika zīmes, kuras aizmirst ir noziegums.

[Jari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leider immer noch ein aktuelles Thema, da manche Stilmittel auch heute noch (erfolgreich) von rechtsextremen Politikern verwendet werden.

[Dani Dányi · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Nem erre a könyvre számítottam. Szubjektív beszámoló következik.)
Fel voltam készülve rá, hogy alaposan technikai és mennyiségi, kvázi-szakirodalommal szórakoztassam el magam, úgy 400 oldalon át. Ahogy nyilván sok olvasót, engem is érdekel - mit érdekel! nem hagy nyugodni a nyelvhasználat hatalomtechnikai (sötét) oldala, és ezt egész felnőtt koromban, az 1984 utószavától a szociál- és reklámpszichológiai könyvekig, a memetikán át, mindenféle irányban vizsgálgattam. Itt sem számítottam meglepetésekre. És végülis nem értek ilyen irányból újdonságok: a náci németország legendás propaganda szárnya is olyasmi szerkezet, amilyen előtte, és utána is elnyekergett sok egymásra transzponálható varázsigét.
Egy másmilyen tájékozottságomat viszont váratlanul megragadta ez a könyv: a Holokauszt-túlélő irodalom egy eddig ismeretlen narratívája Klempereré.
Ezt már a számomra szívbemarkoló ajánlásának szövege is megelőlegezte: rögtön levettem, hogy Klempererné bizony nem az elismerést érdemlő szerzőtársként szerepel itt, hanem bizony a szerző túlélésének hús-vér garanciája lehetett a vészkorszakon át. Lévén Klemperer zsidó származású, neje pedig árja...
Szóval ilyen is lehet a túlélés. "Te hogy bírod ezt", szól a mindenkori kérdés, és az egyik lehetséges, bár szokatlan és nagyszabású megoldás: dokumentálom a nyelv változását. Elpöszmögök az új szavak és szóhasználatok, metaforák és közhelyek, képzettársítások és egyéb absztrakciók gyűjtögető, rendszerező, elemző és problematizáló feljegyzésekkel. Közben, mivel ez napló formában kivitelezhető és esetleges forrásokból kell dolgozni (lévén kiszuperáltak az egyetemi munkahelyemről, na meg a könyvtárból satöbbi) és nem lehet nem szólnia a fokozódó tömegpszichózis, a totális diktatúra és egyre brutálisabb erőszak mindennapjairól.
Hosszú könyv, tartalmas (bár időnként éreztem, hogy a német nyelvre annyira specifikus, hogy minden szómagyarázat dacára egy része nem jön át), szemléletes (rengeteg egészoldalas illusztrációval, zömével korabeli propagandaanyagokból), és a maga keresetlen módján lehengerlően drámai. Bizonyára nagyot ment ez a könyv a keletnémet időkben, és bizonyára (ahogy egy kísérőszöveg le is írja nekünk) Klemperer is nehezen szembesült vele, hogy a sztálinizmus nyelvi és egyéb szerkezete nagy vonalakban egybevethető a hitleri kommunikációs és államgépezettel. A szerző minden figyelmet és tiszteletet megérdemel, ma különösen, hiszen ugyanezek a retorikai és marketing fogások dolgoznak egyre újabb konfigurációkban azóta is.
Engem nem a filológiai tartalom fogott meg elsősorban, hanem annak (szakmai igénnyel eltávolított) tárgyának a tárgyilagosnál közvetlenebb betüremkedései. Rendkívüli eredmény és teljesítmény volt ez - ahogy a túlélés története, amivel összefonódik.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was amazing.

The Nazis lost World War II eventually, but during their 12-year reign they destroyed entire peoples via extermination camps, book burnings, and renaming regions and towns. At the end of the war, often there weren't enough people left alive to go back to their old town and remember the pre-Nazi way of life. You can still see evidence of this if you visit smaller towns in Germany: the old synagogue may be preserved as a museum, but there's no existing Jewish congregation that has replaced it.

As their control of Germany became more and more complete, the Nazis also constantly revised the image that they projected to their people and the rest of the world. The early-mid-30's seemed to have the most violent language for starting a war in the pursuit of Lebensraum, but the anti-Semitic language was conversely less murderous. And because the Nazis were putting out so much propaganda and revising it so often (Klemperer notes one popular textbook was on its twelfth edition after just eight years of publication), it's easy to lose track of how often the Nazis changed their story.

Klemperer's notes, written continuously during the Nazi regime, serve as a chronology of how the Nazis corrupted all of German life, up to the everyday phrases that people would parrot in the streets. Of how his erstwhile friends would gradually give in to anti-Semitic rhetoric by giving up, believing Hitler (many people believed Hitler would never lose the war, even in April 1945), or just picking up the common vernacular.

He talks about the weird Norse/Teutonic obsession of the Nazis, how they always took the easiest linguistic solution (if you can find an old German word to replace an obviously Latin or American word, do it! But if not, the Latin is fine), their strange obsession with the past. (To my mind, the current usage of the word 'cuckold' is a good English example of the same concept.)

For me, there was a constant undertone of sorrow, especially when Klemperer would talk about developing theories during the war, discussing it with colleagues and friends working in the Jews' House (or from his time as a professor). Almost all references to these friends and colleagues would include an aside of when they died in Auschwitz, or when they were sent to Theriesenstadt and then extermination in the Final Solution.

I highly recommend this book, especially if you know some German - it explained the comparisons a lot more to me, but my German is not strong enough to read a largely academic text.

[Nuria Castaño monllor · Rating 4 out of 5]

"En cualquier revolución, sea de carácter político-social, artístico o literario, siempre intervienen dos tendencias. De un lado, está la voluntad de lo completamente nuevo, donde el énfasis se pone con ahí ven la oposición a todo lo vigente hasta el momento; de otro, la necesidad de establecer un nexo con el pasado, de contar con una tradición justificante: en este caso, no se es del todo nuevo, se regresa a aquello contra lo cual pecó la época que debe ser superada, se vuelve a la humanidad, a la nación, a la moralidad, a la verdadera esencia del arte, etc., etc. Ambas tendencias se manifiestan con claridad en las denominaciones y cambios de nombres".