SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Heine, in your new book, you are dealing with how the National Socialists shape the German language to this day. Why are you writing about it now?
Heine: Through the rise of right-wing populist parties in recent years, the accusation "You have used a Nazi word, now you have betrayed your mind" more often. I would like to clarify which words were really influenced by the Nazis and which were not.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Some terms are not even from the Nazis, although they are assigned to them?
Heine: Exactly. The term "bomb weather", for example, never belonged to the Nazi vocabulary, for example, although it is subject to particularly urgent Nazi thought among lay people. In newspapers, however, the word never appeared between 1933 and 1945, but it was already used in the German Empire. But clearly, there is also a rediscovery of Nazi terms: the AfD, for example, railing against a "synchronized press". The word "Gleichschaltung" is one of the most well-known terms from the usage of the Nazis, although here ironically, the meaning has reversed: for the Nazi regime, the equality of press and institutions was positively occupied.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why are so many people getting excited about potential Nazi words today?
Heine: There was always a special interest in language in Germany. This has to do with a long tradition of philosophical and political linguistic criticism. Therefore, there is also a particularly strong fear of being manipulated by language. Because the political center feels helpless towards the AfD, it tries to explain the upswing of the right-wing populists with linguistic manipulation. For example, with the theory that the media had themselves words like "refugee wave" of the AfD, they gradually took over and thereby strengthened the right-wing parties.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You do not believe in this influence?
Heine: I do not think language has that much power. We have seen how the Nazis prepared the Holocaust through words like "special treatment" and dehumanized them with "subhuman" and "asocial" people. Language has thus reinforced prejudices and inclinations. However, there were the inclinations before. The people were ready to murder. They were not brought by the concepts - that's an overestimation of language. Language is not a poison that slowly but surely destroys the brain.
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Matthias Heine
Burnt words: where we still talk like the Nazis - and where not
Publishing company:
Duden
Pages:
224
Price:
EUR 18,00
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SPIEGEL ONLINE: In your opinion, is language reflected too much?
Heine: Language can not be reflected enough. That's what my book is about.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Now you contradict yourself.
Heine: No. My book is not supposed to be a guide to a language police telling you how to talk - but a guide to good style. Some people find it insulting to point out that they should not use one word better. But the indication that it is "better not to use" is not a ban. It's about tact, courtesy and historical awareness.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: When is a word or phrase, for example, inappropriate?
Heine: A journalist colleague has called Russia in a text, for example, as a "giant empire in the East". This is clearly a quote from Hitler's book "Mein Kampf", where Russia is called exactly like that. The colleague is a Jew, he knows God is not a Nazi. But he would not have used the name if he had known that Hitler influenced it.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How can you protect yourself from ignorance and inattention?
Heine: In principle, I can not expect every person of every educated class to be informed about every nuance of the Nazi language. But especially journalists, politicians and anyone else who deals with language professionally should be more involved in the origins of their language images - and to point out to others when they use problematic words. I know that in the excited debate culture that we have right now, it sounds like a utopia. But that should be possible.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Should one delete charged words completely from the linguistic usage?
Heine: No! One should not even delete "Untermensch" from the linguistic usage. There is this word, and for historical texts you need the term. But I'm also a language optimist: I can imagine that there will eventually be a revaluation of certain terms and that even the worst words can be used again neutral.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is the word "look after" an example that this conversion is already taking place? In your book you write that the term in the concentration camps was synonymous with the murder of the inmates. Today he meets us daily.
Heine: "Mentoring" was forbidden to me as a keyword of the Nazi jargon at the beginning of my journalistic career, today he is completely normal. The intersection between the word in the Nazi era and today is bureaucratic German: "Betreuze" is a term that abstractly refers to a process. In the Nazi era, it was, inter alia, for the murder of the disabled.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you not find this development insensitive?
Heine: This obviously shows a lack of historical awareness. But as I said: using a word does not poison us. That so often "care" is said, the AfD has not made big.