In Hitler was building the Third Reich. What were Reichs One and Two?, Cecil does not include the important fact that Reich is a perfectly ordinary German word meaning “Empire”, “Kingdom”, “Nation”, etc.. It is related to English rich and (more distantly) Latin rex (“king”) and Hindu rajah.
seen, for example, in the name of “Austria”, which is the Anglicized version of “Oesterreich” - the “Eastern Kingdom.”
Now known officially as the “Republik Oesterreich”, which translates to the contradictory phrase, the “Republic of the Eastern Kingdom.”
To be more accurate, it translates a concept for which there is no single clear English word: the nation state conceived of as an authority over its people, both functionally and philosophically. Matthew’s “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” is partially translated by “Das Reich von Himmel…” It’s not strictly “empire” or “kingdom” in any sense non-Biblical English normally uses the words, but that idea of a structured, properly-constituted authority, that “Reich” connotes. (Which is not to say I subscribe to that political philosophy – far from it – but to attempt to make its conceptualization a bit more accessible.)
“Und spür’ ich nicht linde, sanft säuselnde Luft,
und ist nicht mein Grab mir erhellet?
Ich seh, wie ein Engel im rosigen Duft
sich tröstend zur Seite mir stellet,
ein Engel, Leonoren, der Gattin so gleich,
der führt mich zur Freiheit ins himmlische Reich.”
– Fidelio
Ooooo, I love it when you talk German to me.