They were just following adjective orders.
You would think so, wouldn’t you? But not true, plain and simple. The co-existence between Fraktur (the old-fashioned blackletter fonts) and Antiqua (the “modern” fonts commonly used also in English) fonts had already been an old hat in Germany long before the Nazis took power. The debate continued during the Nazi rule, but instead of promoting Fraktur the Nazis were, in fact, in favour of replacing it with Antiqua. As early as 1934, Hitler had ridiculed adherents of Fraktur as people who were, out of misplaced nostalgia, supporting something hopelessly outdated. In 1941, the issue was laid to rest by a decree which ruled thatAntiqua was to be the way of writing German, and the only writing style to be taught in schools.
Yes, I came in to correct that post upthread, but now I might add the “clean” stylistic aspects within 20th-century modernism art and design has been a staple, broadly speaking, and advanced within every 20th century fascist and totalitarian movement.
See The Manifesto of Futurism, for example, and theSoviet Constructivism.
Although the fervor of those artistic movements has passed, to look around today, just ask Philip Johnson.
Or you could’ve, as he went on to his just reward in 2005.
Huh. In the “The Modernist Period (1949-79)” photo gallery, looks like different versions of the same sculpture in both “Interior of the Glass House (1949)” and “Atrium of the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center (1964).” He must’ve liked it.
It was a “gift” from the state during the civil ceremony part of a wedding, which was required for a marriage to be legal way before the Nazis took over. People married either in front of an official and then later went to the Church wedding, or they only did the civil ceremony.
It’s still part of this ceremony that the new couple receives the Familienstammbuch (Family genealogy book), so that children Born from this marriage can be recorded there for Family records.
I’m not sure German is so well defined as a language as to allow some manner of “correct grammer” … oh so long ago when I took German classes, the instructor made the point that what he was teaching us was High German … and it’s use was somewhat rare outside of government documents … other than the subject at the beginning of the sentence and the verb at the end, all the other parts of the sentence were in the order that the specific area of German-speaking occurred … not to mention local idioms …
So the question would be which dialect did the Nazis use to enforce their grammer Nazism? … Adolf himself was Austrian, or would they have used Berliner, or Prussian, or Bavarian …
For example … they do NOT speak the Queen’s English in Glasgow … or California … who ya going to believe … George Lucas, some random Scotsman or Her Majesty the Queen of England Elizabeth II? may she live forever …
On the contrary: like many nations–notably, not the US–Germany has a language committee at some level of governmental definition (sort of an ISO, perhaps):
For example, see this “Official Rules” page for spelling in German: original German, and Google translation of that page
A page of free PDFs on the entire project is here, in German; here, that page in Google English translation.
In a fit of madness/enthusiasm I bought all however-many printed volumes at a flea market in Paris and had them shipped to me in NY.
(Oh ß, you were so sweet, curvy, special, the Marlene Dietrich of graphemes…)
Cite?
Many studies have been done on design under the Third Reich; I’m wondering if you have a specific one in mind on governmental overview. (Somewhere in GQ is a good thread on the Hugo Boss/SS uniform case, which can be adduced to such studies as a test case popular among even laymen.)
Whither.
It’s a multi-government organization, so in being international it’s akin to ISO, but AFAIK it’s more along the lines of a commitee than a permanent structure. The rules are defined by government representatives from all the countries where German is an official language, working together. Compare with Spanish (which has 23 national Academies working both together and independently) and French (which has a single Academy whose members may come from any francophone country).
Wow. Now there’s a story.
The fons et origo of the modern national movements.
“The French do not care what they say, so long as they pronounce it correctly.” - George Bernard Shaw (attrib.)
The Duden is not a government-sponsored language committee. It is a dictionary published by a private publishing house. Out of all the dictionaries which provide rules on supposedly “correct” spelling, it is the most widely used, but it is still a private initative. Germany does not have an equivalent to the government-run academies (Académie francaise in French or Real Academia in Spanish) which purport to administer a language top-down.
Now that is, in my view, not a proper way of putting it. As I said in my previous post, there is no central governing body of the German language. Nonetheless, it’s not “anything goes”. German is, indeed, split into a lot of regional or local dialects, and grammer, pronunciation and vocabulary differ widely among them. Nonetheless, there is a variant of it, called High German or Standard German, which is considered the standardised, “correct” variant of it. This is what foreigners learn when they learn German as a second language. Within Germany, Standard German is not necessarily used in every instance of everyday usage - two people from the same region would more likely speak in their regional dialect. But Standard German is certainly not rare outside of government documents. Pretty much anything that’s written is in Standard German, be it in government or administration, or business, or media and literature (even low-quality media and literature). Also national television (as opposed to regional television) is in Standard German, which is why the use of dialects is receding among the younger generations. On top of that, Standard German would be what two Germans from different regions with different dialects would communicate in even in spoken usage.
Thank you. Schnitte, for the correction, and my apologies for mouthing off. As I was typing my post even then, and thinking about my bargain splurge in Paris, that something was weird in the economic-“official” connection that lets me feel like such a smart shopper.
And that the status/presence or not of such an office or organization in Germany could have been determined within 5-10 minutes of Googling.
It was just so much fun to remember Paris in the Springtime in the 90’s. Plus I gave those volumes to my college library 20 years ago anyway, and I needed to tell someone how brainy I was/am…
The confusion is understandable, in particular since the Duden spelling is referred to a lot in the teaching at German schools. But it is nonetheless not an “official” spelling. During the 1990s, when the governments of the German states agreed the spelling reform and that reform turned out to be very controversial, the matter was even litigated in courts. Outcome: There was no constitutional authority to prescribe an official spelling, and everybody was free to spell any way they liked, but the state governments did have the authority to determine a spelling that was considered the correct one for the purposes of marking essays in school.
Yes! That’s what got me going. And the rest of your post is fascinating.
Duden scored, whereas here the only people to tout the official nature of any work marked “Webster’s” as a mark of authenticity are the hundredandone publishers of each and every dictionary with the word, and the many people who’ve bought one.
Thank you very much for this explanation … really not much different for the United States’ usage of English before television and radio …