Word of the Month: Das Affentheater

Monkeys and apes are Affen, and an Affentheater is, in the literal sense, a theater production performed by such animals. But the term is used always figuratively, to denote actions by a group of people behaving in a noisy, exaggerated, or annoying fashion that is ultimately pointless. It's a catchy image that captures succinctly a multitude of (mainly negative) connotations, and that's why I like the term.



Its use is best illustrated by an example. On Jan. 6, 2021 some far-right members of Congress tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election by formally objecting to the certified results from several states during the—essentially ceremonial—joint certification session in Congress. These efforts were doomed to failure from the outset, as the objections would have required majorities in both Houses to be sustained, and these majorities were simply not there. Like everyone else, the politicians raising the objections knew this, but did it anyway, as a political stunt and with great fanfare, apparently to impress their right-wing base. As a result, the ceremony was delayed twice for hours to allow for pointless debates whose outcomes were known from the outset. To me, these debates illustrated nicely what Germans call Affentheater.

Note also that the term does not apply to the storming of the Capitol by a right-wing mob on the same day, which interrupted the confirmation session and caused mayhem inside and outside the Capitol for hours. This was a riot with far-reaching consequences at home and abroad and far more sinister than anything one would call an Affentheater—exasperating as it may be, an Affentheater will in the end amount to not much more than an annoyance.

Word of the Month: Index

Word of the Month: Der Wichtigtuer

Word of the Month: Index

I'm reviving the word-of-the-month feature, which has been dormant for a while, to introduce a word that has been on my mind a lot these days.

Wichtig is an adjective meaning "important", and a tuer (derived from the verb tun—to do) is someone who does something or acts. A Wichtigtuer, then, is a person who "makes him- or herself important", i.e. seeks the limelight. The term is more specific than the English "attention-getter": A Wichtigtuer always participates in some public debate, whereas an attention-getter may simply dye a strand of hair baby-blue. That is, a Wichtigtuer is always an attention-getter, but not every attention-getter is a Wichtigtuer. Wichtigtuerin is the female form, and Wichtigtuerei is the noun, the thing a Wichtigtuer does.



The term often comes to my mind in connection with the current pandemic, where certain people take it upon themselves to criticize, for unconvincing reasons, the restrictions on public life recommended by epidemiologists. Note the emphasis on "unconvincing"—I do not deny the usefulness of a public, fact-based debate about the most effective response to the Covid19 virus. But I cannot take serious a self-proclaimed expert who claims that the pandemic is no more dangerous that the common flu—really? Do morgues overflow or are intensive care units in hospitals stretched to the limit on a regular basis during flu seasons? Why would anyone go public with such outlandish claims? To me, it's a Wichtigtuer, who cannot stand that others get all the attention.

Wichtigtuerei is also often at the core of the seemingly ever-increasing readiness of people to take offense (see my post on this topic). Take political cartoons as an example. Cartoonists exaggerate distinctive features of the persons they depict—Merkel's jowls, Obama's ears, Clinton's nose, Trump's corpulence—it's part of their job. This also means that when we can tell a person's ethnicity from his or her appearance in real life, we should also be able to tell it from their caricature. But when this happens, there will be, with predictable regularity, people accusing the cartoonist of racism on social media. I often feel that it's the only way for such people to feel self-important—they are Wichtigtuer (the plural is the same as the singular!).

Note that neither of these manifestations of Wichtigtuerei is harmless. People have died because they did not take the pandemic serious, and people have lost their jobs and careers have been destroyed by spurious accusations on social media.

New Photobook

This is my latest photo diary, describing a truly memorable 12-day trip through the Republic of Georgia, a small country that is fast turning into a go-to travel destination.
Preview at blurb.com

In my humble opinion, the book looks particularly good on an iPad or other Mac device. Get it here: iBooks edition

Word of the Month: Die Kulturbrille

Word of the Month: Index I'm reading Helen Macdonald's book Falcon, where she introduces, on the first page of the introduction, our current Word of the Month. It is a term coined by German-born Franz Boas (1858-1942), who is considered the father of American anthropology (pictured at right). The word has two compounds: Kultur ("culture") and Brille ("glasses" or "spectacles"). In Macdonald's words, it's "the invisible mental lens your own culture gives you through which you view the world". The author describes in subsequent chapters how our very human Kulturbrille makes falcons the "repository for human meanings". For Boas, it was important for anthropologists to become aware of their Kulturbrille to prevent them from making biased judgments about the alien cultures they encountered and tried to understand. The same is important for people like us, who increasingly live in a multi-cultural environment. I like the present term because it captures an abstract concept through a very concrete image, a characteristic it shares with other words of the month I have introduced.

FIFA World Cup 2018

Continuing a tradition I started many years ago, I'm creating again a post that allows the soccer fans among my friends to share thoughts about the tournament as it unfolds. The difference this time is that for health reasons, I cannot travel to Germany to watch the matches with my brothers. I have to find ways to do this here, which may mean that I cannot watch every match I want to see.

A few initial remarks. This Cup promises to be really exciting because there is no clear-cut favorite. In 2014, Brazil was expected to win. Especially the Brazilians themselves seemed to be believe that, which made their historic 1:7 loss to Germany in the semi-finals the more devastating. This time, they are again one of the favorites, and for much more legitimate reasons. But France, Spain, and Germany also have strong teams, and the English, Portuguese, and Belgians should not be counted out. All of this looks very promising.

Postscript: And it was an exciting Cup, which will go down in history as the Cup of Surprises. Upsets seemed to be the rule, not the exception, although the (well-deserved) winner, France, was not one of them. But Croatia made it to the final!

Word of the Month: Der Richtungsstreit

Word of the Month: Index

We are hearing that within the Democratic Party right now, there is a raging battle between its 'centrist' or 'moderate' wing and its 'liberal' or 'left' wing, recently energized by Bernie Sanders' campaign. At issue is how to respond to the loss the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, suffered in the presidential election of 2016. (I believe, by the way, that these labels are wrong, at least from a European perspective, but that's not the topic of this post.)

The Germans—surprise, surprise!—have a word for this type of debate: Richtungsstreit. The term combines the word for direction, Richtung, with Streit, the word for a controversy in which both sides are fully engaged. It usually involves strong language and may even occasionally end in fisticuffs (but nothing stronger).*



A Richtungsstreit, then, is an intense debate about the direction an organization, especially a political party, should take. One reason why the Germans have a special word for this may be that every political party of any standing in the country gets involved in a Richtungsstreit on a regular basis when it's confronted with a new challenge to which it has no ready-made response: If its base is broad enough, it will be almost impossible to "bring everybody under one hat" right away, to use a German idiom.

A very good example are the Greens (die Grünen), a party that grew out of the student movement of the 60s. To its ever-lasting credit, it succeeded in making environmental protection and climate change mainstream issues supported across the political spectrum in Germany. But the party is also engaged in what seems to be a permanent Richtungsstreit between 'Fundis' (short for 'fundamentalists') and 'Realos'.

The Fundis value ideological purity over everything else and would rather not join a coalition government if that would involve compromising some cherished principle. The Realos, on the other hand, want to participate in government in order to be able to influence the direction of the country and are willing to compromise, to a degree (they may also have doubts about the validity of some of the more extreme positions the Fundis have been taking, like their refusal to sanction any involvement of German troops abroad, no matter what the objectives are).
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*Note that the s between the components Richtung and Streit is a Fugen-s (joining s), which we have encountered already in other Words of the Month: Its function is to make the pronunciation easier.

Word of the Month: Der Scherbenhaufen

Word of the Month: Index

Scherben are potsherds or shards, and a Haufen is a heap. A Scherbenhaufen, then, is a heap of shards—think of what happens when a china cabinet topples over and spills its contents on the floor.

Image source: Langerwehe Pottery website

Why is this an interesting word? Because it's used most often metaphorically in German to indicate the complete failure by a person or persons in charge of some goal-oriented outfit like a team, a corporation, or a government. The term commonly appears in phrases such as "she is standing before a Scherbenhaufen" or "he left behind a Scherbenhaufen" when someone's attempt to reach some goal turned into its opposite and resulted in a debacle.



Depending on the context, the term may carry a mix of connotations, from the dashed hopes and heartbreak on the part of the person who failed to glee and Schadenfreude* on the part of observers who thought the effort was hopeless, or too grandiose, to begin with or who wanted it to fail for other reasons.

The very concrete image of a Scherbenhaufen thus can carry multi-faceted connotations, and that's why I like this word: When you use it, you say much more than a simple statement of failure could express.
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*I never made Schadenfreude a WoM because it seems to me that it has entered English as a foreign word no longer in need of an explanation.