Reich
This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2021) |
Reich (
The term
The continued use of the term "German Empire", Deutsches Reich, by the Weimar Republic ... conjured up an image among educated Germans that resonated far beyond the institutional structures Bismarck created: the successor to the Roman Empire; the vision of God's Empire here on earth; the universality of its claim to suzerainty; and in a more prosaic but no less powerful sense, the concept of a German state that would include all German speakers in central Europe—"one People, one Reich, one Leader", as the Nazi slogan was to put it.[3]
The term is derived from the Germanic word which generally means "realm", but in German, it is typically used to designate a kingdom or an empire, especially the Roman Empire.[4] The terms Kaisertum (German: [ˈkaɪ̯zɐˌtuːm] ⓘ, "Imperium") and Kaiserreich ("Imperial realm") are used in German to more specifically define an empire ruled by an emperor.[4]
Reich is comparable in meaning and development (as well as descending from the same
In the history of Germany specifically, it is used to refer to:
- the early medieval Frankish Realm (Francia) and Carolingian Empire (the Fränkisches Reich and Karolingerreich);
- the Holy Roman Empire (Heiliges Römisches Reich), which lasted from the coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800, until 1806, when it was dissolved during the Napoleonic Wars;
- the German Empire (Deutsches Reich or Deutsches Kaiserreich), which lasted from the unification of Germany in 1871 until its collapse after World War I, during the German Revolution of 1918–1919;
- the Weimar Republic of 1919–1933 continued to use Deutsches Reich as its official name;
- Nazi Germany, the state often referred to as the Third Reich, which lasted from the Enabling Act in 1933 until the end of World War II in Europe in 1945. It continued to use the official name, Deutsches Reich, until 1943, when it was renamed to the Großdeutsches Reich (Greater German Reich).
The Nazis adopted the term "Third Reich" to legitimize their government as the rightful successor to the retroactively renamed "First" and "Second" Reichs – the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire, respectively; the Nazis discounted the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic entirely. The terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich" are not used by historians, and the term "Fourth Reich" is mainly used in fiction and political humor, although it is also used by those who subscribe to neo-Nazism.
Etymology
The German noun Reich is derived from
The German adjective
It is probable that the Germanic word was not inherited from pre-Proto-Germanic, but rather loaned from
The word has many cognates outside of Germanic and Celtic, notably
Usage throughout German history
This section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2021) |
Frankish Empire
Frankenreich or Fränkisches Reich is the German name given to the
Holy Roman Empire
The term Reich was part of the German names for Germany for much of its history. Reich was used by itself in the common German variant of the Holy Roman Empire, (Heiliges Römisches Reich (HRR)). Der rîche was a title for the Emperor. However, Latin, not German, was the formal legal language of the medieval Empire (Imperium Romanum Sacrum), so English-speaking historians are more likely to use Latin imperium than German Reich as a term for this period of German history. The common contemporary Latin legal term used in documents of the Holy Roman Empire was for a long time regnum ("rule, domain, empire", such as in Regnum Francorum for the Frankish Kingdom) before imperium was in fact adopted, the latter first attested in 1157, whereas the parallel use of regnum never fell out of use during the Middle Ages.
Modern age
At the beginning of the
Resistance against the
The advent of
German Reich
In the case of the Hohenzollern Empire (1871–1918), the official name of the country was Deutsches Reich ("German Realm"), because under the
The exact translation of the term "German Empire" would be Deutsches Kaiserreich. This name was sometimes used informally for Germany between 1871 and 1918, but it was disliked by the first German Emperor,
The unified Germany which arose under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1871 was the first entity that was officially called in German Deutsches Reich. Deutsches Reich remained the official name of Germany until 1945, although these years saw three very different political systems more commonly referred to in English as: "the German Empire" (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933; this term is a post-World War II coinage not used at the time), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945).
During the Weimar Republic
After 1918 "Reich" was usually not translated as "Empire" in English-speaking countries, and the title was instead simply used in its original German. During the Weimar Republic the term Reich and the prefix Reichs- referred not to the idea of empire but rather to the institutions, officials, affairs etc. of the whole country as opposed to those of one of its constituent federal states (Länder), in the same way that the terms Bund (federation) and Bundes- (federal) are used in Germany today, and comparable to The Crown in Commonwealth countries and The Union in the United States.
During the Nazi period
The Nazis sought to legitimize their power historiographically by portraying their ascendancy to rule as the direct continuation of an ancient German past. They adopted the term Drittes Reich ("Third Empire" – usually rendered in English in the partial translation "the Third Reich"), first used in a 1923 book entitled Das Dritte Reich by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck,[7] that counted the medieval Holy Roman Empire (which nominally survived until the 19th century) as the first and the 1871–1918 monarchy as the second, which was then to be followed by a "reinvigorated" third one. The Nazis ignored the previous 1918–1933 Weimar period, which they denounced as a historical aberration, contemptuously referring to it as "the System". In the summer of 1939, the Nazis themselves actually banned the continued use of the term in the press, ordering it to use expressions such as Nationalsozialistisches Deutschland ("National Socialist Germany"), Großdeutsches Reich ("Greater German Reich"), or simply Deutsches Reich (German Reich) to refer to the German state instead.[8] It was Adolf Hitler's personal desire that Großdeutsches Reich and nationalsozialistischer Staat ("[the] National Socialist State") would be used in place of Drittes Reich.[8] Reichskanzlei Berchtesgaden ("Reich Chancellery Berchtesgaden"), another nickname of the regime (named after the eponymous town located in the vicinity of Hitler's mountain residence where he spent much of his time in office) was also banned at the same time, despite the fact that a sub-section of the Chancellery was in fact installed there to serve Hitler's needs.[8]
Although the term "Third Reich" is still commonly used in reference to the Nazi dictatorship, historians avoid using the terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich", which are seldom found outside
The Nazis also spoke of enlarging the then-established Greater German Reich into a "Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation" (Großgermanisches Reich Deutscher Nation) by gradually and directly annexing all of the historically Germanic countries and regions of Europe into the Nazi state (Flanders, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden etc.).[9]
Possible negative connotations in modern usage
A number of previously neutral words which were used by the Nazis later took on negative connotations in German (e.g.
Limited usage in the railway system of the German Democratic Republic
The exception is that during the
The cognate of the word Reich is used in all the
The word is part of the official names of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the form of kongerige (Danish), kongerike (Norwegian), and konungarike (Swedish), all meaning kingdom, or literally the "realm of a king" (a kingdom can also be called kongedømme in Danish and Norwegian and kungadöme or konungadöme in Swedish, direct cognates of the English word). Two regions in Norway that were petty kingdoms before the unification of Norway around 900 AD have retained the word in the names (see Ringerike and Romerike). The word is also used in "Svea rike", with the current spelling Sverige, the name of Sweden in Swedish. Thus in the official name of Sweden, Konungariket Sverige, the word rike appears twice.
The derived prefix rigs- (Danish and pre-1907 Norwegian) and riks- (Swedish and Norwegian) and implies nationwide or under central jurisdiction. Examples include riksväg and riksvei, names for a national road in Swedish and Norwegian. It is also present in the names of numerous institutions in all the Scandinavian countries, such as Rigsrevisionen the agency responsible for oversight of the state finances in Denmark and Sveriges Riksbank (commonly known as just Riksbanken), the central bank of Sweden. It is also used in words such as udenrigs (Danish), utrikes (Swedish) and utenriks (Norwegian), relating to foreign countries and other things from abroad. The opposite word is indenrigs/inrikes/innenriks, meaning domestic.
The adjective form of the word, rig in Danish and rik in Swedish/Norwegian, means "rich", like in other Germanic languages.
Rijk/ryk
Rijk is the Dutch and ryk the Afrikaans and Frisian equivalent of the German word Reich.
In a political sense in the Netherlands and Belgium the word rijk often connotes a connection with the
In colloquial speech Rijk usually means working for the central government rather than the provincial or municipal, much like e.g. Americans refer to the "federal" government.
In Afrikaans, ryk refers to rulership and area of governance (mostly a kingdom), but in a modern sense the term is used in a much more figurative sense (e.g. Die Hemelse Ryk (the heavenly kingdom, China)), as the sphere under one's control or influence, such as:
- die drie ryke van die natuur: die plante-, diere- en delfstowweryk (the three kingdoms of nature: the plant, animal and mineral kingdom)
- die duisendjarige ryk (the thousand year realm, the Biblical millennium)
- die ryk van die verbeelding, van drome (the realm of the imagination, of dreams)
- 'n bestuurder wat sy ryk goed beheer (a manager that controls his domain well)
As in German, the adjective rijk/ryk also means "rich".
See also
References
- ^ "Reich". Dictionary.com. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
- ^ See "the Reich" in Cambridge Dictionary (2013) Archived 2018-04-06 at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 9781101042670. Archivedfrom the original on 2018-05-04.
- ^ .
- ^ Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, original suggestion from Karl Brugmann grundrisz der vergl. gramm. 1, 65. Also mentioned in e.g. Calvert Watkins, American Heritage dictionary of Indo-European Roots, p. 70.
- ^ Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch cites Conrad of Megenberg (fastn. 140.14): ich pin ein konig aus Frankreich.
- ISBN 978-0-75-091866-4.
- ^ a b c Schmitz-Berning, Cornelia (2000). Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10875 Berlin, pp. 159–160. (in German)
- ISBN 3-515-07641-7.