Well here it is my first topic started in GQ. First some background. I’m a Marxist. As such I read Marx. Much of Marx’s work is poorly translated. As such, I frequently go back to the original german to find out what the fuck he was talking about.
This one has me stumped.
In his works Marx talks about the Cabbage-Junkers (how it is translated in English) Krautjunker is the word in German. I simply thought that this was a derogatory way of refering to the German Aristocrats. Then I found that Marx himself translated Krautjunker into “fox-hunter” when referring to the English aristocrats.
So my question is two fold.
What is the definition of krautjunker. Not the literal one, that is Cabbage-Junker, but what does this mean. Why did they use it?
And also is it a pejorative word?
Thanks.
Golly, you don’t believe in starting out simple, do you? Can’t ask us something easy like, “Why do my knees make those popping noises when I bend down?”
Here’s Engels–ask him.
About 1/3 of the way through the document (I’ll let you wade through the whole thing if you want):
“Kraut” doesn’t necessarily have to mean “cabbage” as such, it could just be one of those phrases that passes into the language but nobody remembers what it originally meant. (“Dickweed” doesn’t have anything to do with weeds.) It doesn’t sound pejorative, from the context, but then I didn’t read the whole thing, and I’m not that familiar with Marxism anyway.
Enjoy! I’m going to bed…
Get with the times, Commie.
Ok, well we know the 19tth C. “feel” of the word Junker-- sort of a Prussian titled land-owning dillettante is the sense I always got. Well, my dictionary notes that Krautjunker is a colloquial term for country squire —I think the feel is “potato-farming-out-in-the-sticks-aristocrat”. Something lightly inherently perjorative in that, I think, and given the usual tone when discussing Junkers or Kulaks or whatever in Marxist literature, I’d assume that he doesn’t mean it in a nice way.
Why make this difficult? Take Marx at his word. “Fox hunter” refers to a sport of the royalty and landed gentry of England. In the U. S. we’d refer to these people as the idle rich.
I think Lisa Simpson’s ballet teacher said it best:
“Kids, what do we call it when people who AREN’T equal are treated equally?”
Kids: “Communism!”
But, in German “fox-hunter” would be fuchsjager.
And,MadHatter,don’t you mean Lisa’s tap dance teacher?
Welcome to my first nit-picking post. I will attempt to control myself from now on.
Thanks for your help. It wouldn’t be as confusing to me if they ahd translatted it simply into idle rich, or something. It’s the fact that Marx on several occasions referred, in English, to “cabbage-Junkers”. That implies that English speakers of the time would know what he was talking about.