Curated playlist
German words and phrases
- PrivatdozentA German Privatdozent can lose the title after more than two semesters without teaching.
- KleinstaatereiKleinstaaterei was Germany in 1789, split into 294 to 348 states depending on the count.
- Drang nach OstenDrang nach Osten, meaning "Drive to the East," began as a 19th-century German nationalist slogan.
- WirtschaftswunderLudwig Erhard abolished price controls in 1948 even though the Allied powers opposed it.
- ÜbermenschIn Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the Übermensch is a goal for humanity, not an existing person.
- FührerIn 1921 Hitler quit the Nazi Party to block a merger, then demanded dictatorial powers to return.
- OstpolitikIn 1987, Erich Honecker became the first East German head of state to visit West Germany.
- UntermenschThe Nazi word Untermensch began with an American Ku Klux Klan member's 1922 book.
- KapellmeisterMozart never held the title Kapellmeister, yet people called him that anyway.
- LeitmotifRichard Wagner, the leitmotif's champion, avoided the word and once wrote "so-called" before it.
- NazismThe word Nazi began as a taunt for a clumsy Bavarian yokel. In power, the party almost never used it.
- BlitzkriegHitler privately called the word blitzkrieg a completely idiotic word. He later denied ever using it at all.
- LebensraumThe German word Lebensraum first appeared in an 1860 review of Darwin. It meant the region where a species lives.
- SchadenfreudeSchadenfreude is the pleasure a person feels on learning that someone else has failed, suffered or been humiliated. The German word means, literally, harm-joy. Researchers have detected the feeling in children as young as 24 months. Some…