Curated category
German words and phrases
- PrivatdozentPrivatdozent is a title that has shaped European academic life for well over two centuries, yet most people outside German-speaking universities have never…
- KleinstaatereiKleinstaaterei is a pejorative German word coined in the early nineteenth century, and it names one of the strangest political conditions in European history.
- Drang nach OstenDrang nach Osten, a phrase meaning "Drive to the East," began as a 19th-century German nationalist slogan and ended as a justification for some of the worst…
- WirtschaftswunderThe Wirtschaftswunder, a German word meaning "economic miracle," describes one of the most dramatic reversals of fortune in modern history.
- ÜbermenschThe Übermensch sits at the heart of Friedrich Nietzsche's 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and it has been misread, weaponized, and reclaimed ever since.
- FührerFührer is a German word meaning "leader" or "guide," and for most of the world, it carries one overwhelming association: Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany…
- OstpolitikIn 1963, Egon Bahr stood before the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing and delivered a speech that would eventually reshape Europe.
- UntermenschUntermensch. The word itself sounds like a verdict. In German, it literally means 'underman' or 'sub-man', and when the Nazi regime printed nearly four…
- KapellmeisterThe word Kapellmeister earned the soprano Aloysia Weber an unusual compliment in the 18th century. The actor and musician Joachim Daniel Preisler heard her…
- LeitmotifLeitmotif is a word that describes something listeners have felt for centuries without having a name for it: a short, recurring musical phrase tied to a…
- NazismNazism, formally named National Socialism, began its public life as a name its own followers found embarrassing. In the 1920s, opponents in the German labour…
- BlitzkriegBlitzkrieg lit up the front pages of Western newspapers in September 1939, when journalists scrambling to describe the German assault on Poland landed on a…
- LebensraumLebensraum, the German word for "living space", began as a dry term in a biologist's book review and ended as the ideological engine behind the worst war of…