Word of the Month: Dolchstoßlegende Revisited

Word of the Month: Index

After the election of Barak Obama in 2008, I introduced Dolchstoßlegende (blaming a defeat on backstabbing at the home front) as Word of the Month. My examples implied that this type of pseudo-explanation is used primarily by the political right as an excuse for a defeat. But the recent election, in which Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, shows that the right has no monopoly on Dolchstoßlegenden (that's the plural).

Two days after the election, Clinton claimed that her defeat was the result of interference by the FBI, whose director, James Comey, had sent a letter to Congress eleven days before the election stating that new e-mails had been discovered which might be pertinent to the Bureau's investigation of whether Clinton had mishandled classified information. The timing of the letter was indeed suspicious—early enough to have an impact on undecided voters, but too late for the Clinton Campaign to weather the storm.

However, we'll probably never know if and to what the degree the letter had an impact on the election—the polls have simply been too unreliable in the last days of the campaign. But even if it influenced some voters, it should not distract from the fact that Clinton simply ran a flawed campaign that failed to read the mood of a significant portion of the electorate correctly. In the words of Sen. Chuck Shumer, a Clinton supporter, “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in Western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin." This turned out to be a miscalculation and provides a much better explanation for why Clinton lost.

There is also a second form of the Dolchstoßlegende at work in the reaction of some Clinton supporters. This one blames Clinton's loss on the 1% of voters who voted for Jill Stein, the candidate of the Green Party. Yes, if these voters had voted for Clinton, she may have won. But why single them out? Why not blame the Democrats who voted for Trump (9%) or Hispanics (a whopping 29% in spite of Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric)? It makes no sense to arbitrarily blame a particular segment of the electorate when there are other segments Clinton did not reach either. Her campaign simply did not produce a majority in the swing states she needed to win, and this should be blamed on the campaign, first and foremost, and by implication, on its candidate.

But admitting mistakes is hard—I know this from my own experience. It's much easier to blame others and resort to a Dolchstoßlegende, i.e., an excuse disguised as an explanation.

Public Architecture in China Today

In this month's Word of the Month, I pointed out the similarities of public buildings built in China in the 1950s and 60s with those built in Nazi-Germany and the former Soviet Union. But I cannot leave it at that—things have changed, and they have changed dramatically in China. Readers may know the skyline of Pudong, the new financial district of Shanghai, which has become a veritable architectural vanity fair, where each new tower added to the skyline tries to surpass its neighbors not only in height, but also, and especially, through its daring design. Most of them are unabashedly modern, and this is also true for public buildings. We got a glimpse of this new architecture in 2008 during the Beijing Olympics, where the "bird's nest", the main athletic venue, became an icon of the games. The Beijing Opera, or more accurately, the National Center for the Performing Arts, which opened in 2007, is equally modern in its design (top left). On my recent trip, I was particularly taken by the Grand Theater in Chongqing, completed in 2009, which occupies a prominent location on a headland overlooking the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers and appears to be Chongqing's answer to the Sydney Opera House: A building with a unique shape, sitting on an exposed platform jutting into a body of water and destined to become an icon of the city (center and bottom left during the day and night, respectively). It is true that foreign firms are still dominant in the design of these buildings (for example, the French architect Paul Andreu designed the Beijing Center and the German firm van Gerkan, Marg und Partner the Chongqing Theater). But this may change as Chinese architects rise to greater prominence (like Wang Shu, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2012). In any case, Chinese authorities appear to be eager to demonstrate to the world that they are as modern in outlook as their Western counterparts.

Word of the Month: Die Herrschaftsarchitektur

On a recent trip to China, I visited Tiananmen Square in Beijing and was struck by the similarities between the buildings flanking it on the east and west and those built in Nazi-Germany or the Soviet Union to house state functions. The similarities between the latter two were already skewered by Osbert Lancaster in his collection of architectural cartoons Pillar to Post (1938; top two drawings on the left). The Great Hall of the People at Tiananmen Square (bottom left) would have provided him with a third example. All of these are instances of Herrschaftsarchitektur. Herrschaft is a general term that can refer to any situation in which someone is Herr (in the sense of "master" or "lord") over someone or something else, like the rule of a certain party or the reign of a certain leader. And Architektur is, of course, a cognate of English "architecture". Herrschaftsarchitektur, then, refers to the buildings a ruling class or party erects to accommodate its operations and, at the same time, express its power and dominance. The latter characteristic is essential: To become Herrschaftsarchitektur, it's not enough that a building be used by a ruling power. It must be intended to symbolize its might and will to rule, often in combination with an attempt to intimidate its subjects. Follow-up: Public Architecture in China Today.

Word of the Month: Zersiedeln, die Zersiedelung

Word of the Month: Index

Like English, German allows for the creation of new verbs by adding a prefix to an existing one. In fact, German offers a broader range of prefixes that can be used to this end, and I will dedicate one of my next posts to this topic.

For starters, let's look at just one of these prefixes, zer-, which has no real equivalent in English. It indicates an action that destroys something. It is particularly expressive because of the sharp z-sound it starts with. For example, reißen means "to tear", and zerreißen means "to tear apart" or "tear to pieces". Our current word of the month is another example. It's formed by adding zer to siedeln (to settle) and means literally to degrade [a countryside] by settlement. Zersiedelung is the noun formed from the verb. The term originated with urban and regional planners and is usually translated as "urban sprawl". But Zersiedelung is somewhat more general—it can happen far away from urban centers.



The image used in this post is a good illustration. It shows how the second-growth forests covering a good portion of Connecticut often look like moth-eaten carpets from the air. Roads through such areas are typically flanked by a monotonous succession of cookie-cutter houses sitting on grounds that have been cleared of all trees, producing, in the worst case, a barren "moonscape". A frequent consequence is habitat destruction. And when the cleared land is covered by a vast lawn that needs regular watering to stay green, there can be a noticeable effect on the water table (I know of a mansion in a neighboring town that needs a second well just for watering more than one acre of grass!).

Word of the Month: Der Tatendrang

Word of the Month: Index

Taten is the plural of Tat, which means "action" or "deed", and Drang means "urge" or "drive"—it refers to a strong inclination to do something. In combination, the terms indicate a pronounced psychological disposition towards action. But note that this state of mind is not the same as mindless activism: Yes, people full of Tatendrang get fidgety when something can be done to remedy a situation or when adventure beckons. But that does not mean that they plunge headlessly into action, no matter what the consequences are. Rather, they prefer an active over a contemplative life style, but may well be able to keep their impulses in check when the situation demands it.



Drang is perhaps best known to English speakers in the combination Sturm und Drang, a German literary movement of the late 18th century. The name is usually translated as "Storm and Stress" in English, but that is really a mistranslation because Drang does not mean "stress": a Drang comes from the inside and is not imposed from the outside. So, why does this mistranslation prevail? I don't know. Yes, "Storm and Urge" sounds strange and does not have the catchiness of the German original, but what's wrong with "Storm and Drive"?

Sevenstar Contest Cup 2016

Photobook by Ulrich Flemming et al.
Two exciting days on board the Amica Agrippina in Medemblik, Holland

Word of the Month: Der Hassprediger

Word of the Month: Index

Hass is the German word for hatred, and a Prediger is a preacher (derived from the verb predigen-to preach). Taken together, the two compounds refer to someone who, in his function as preacher, calls for hatred and violence. Hasspredigerin is the female form.



The term goes back to the end of the 19th century. But the Duden, the official German spelling guide, lists it in 2006 for the first time. This reflects an increased use in the early 2000s in connection with the activities of certain radical imams who used their pulpit to sow hatred against Western liberal societies and to call for a Holy War to overthrow them. [Source: Wikipedia article "Hassprediger"]

Since then, the term has assumed a wider meaning. It is now being used to characterize anyone who, in some public function, attempts to instill in an audience hatred of some group on the outside, be it for ethnic, political, or religious reasons, even instigate violence against members of that group. For example, the leaders of some xenophobic movements on the far right in Germany have been called Hassprediger (like other nouns ending in –er, the plural is the same as the singular).