#germanistik

Ein paar Linguistik-Memes

"Kann man Kommissar zerlegen?🤔" - ich gerade beim Lernen für Sprachwissenschaft

Here, dear Max, are two books and a pebble. I’ve always tried hard to find something for your birthday that is of such a neutral nature that it cannot be changed, be lost, be spoiled, and be forgotten. And after having pondered the problem for months I once again could think of nothing but sending you a book. But books are a vexation; if on the one hand they are neutral, on the other hand they are all the more interesting; and then only my convictions attracted me to the neutral ones, but with me convictions are by no means the decisive factor, and at the end I found myself, still changing my mind, holding in my hand a book that simply burned with sheer interestingness. Once I deliberately forgot your birthday. That was of course better than sending a book, but it wasn’t good. Therefore I am sending you the pebble now, and will send one to you as long as we live. Keep it in your pocket; it will protect you. If you leave it in a drawer, it won’t be inactive either; but if you throw it away, that will be best of all. For you know, Max, my love for you is greater than myself and I dwell in it rather than it dwells in me. And if it only has feeble support in my insecure nature, by means of the pebble it comes to occupy an abode in rock, even if only in a crack in the sidewalk on Schalengasse. For a long time this love has saved me more often than you know, and right now, when I am more puzzled about myself than ever and when fully conscious feel half asleep, but so extremely light, barely existing—I go around as if my guts were black, you know–at such a time as now it feels good to throw a pebble like this into the world and thus divide certainty from uncertainty. What are books compared to that! Once a book begins to bore you, it goes on doing so, or your child tears it up, or, like Walser’s book, it’s already falling apart when you receive it. But the pebble cannot bore you; a pebble also cannot disintegrate, or if it does, only in times far in the future. You also cannot forget it because you are not supposed to remember it. Finally, you can never lose it for good since you’ll find it again on any old gravel path because it is just any old pebble… In short, I have found the finest of birthday presents for you and convey it to you with a kiss which is meant to express awkwardly my thanks that you exist. Yours, Franz.

i think my favorite german word is "zweckentfremdung".

On the Term of Exile No need to drive a nail into the wall To hang your hat on; When you come in, just drop it on the chair No guest has sat on.

Wenn ihr Interesse an wissenschaftlicher Auseinandersetzung mit Fanfiction habt, schaut doch am Freitag, 24. Januar 2025 zwischen 10 und 14 Uhr vor Ort oder via Zoom bei der Studi-Konferenz des Fanficforums Frankfurt vorbei!

“I had taken up the study of philology out of love for German literature; I also did some philosophy, Sanskrit, and Indo-European linguistics. It never occurred to me to consider what I would do with all this knowledge in later life. Only much later, when the lightning flash of vocation was already several years behind me, did I understand. When I had completed my philosophical studies at Pullach (chaperoned at a distance by Erich Przywara) and my four years of theology in Lyons (inspired by Henri de Lubac) in the company of my fellow students Daniélou, Varillon, Bouillard, and many others, I came to see how very helpful my knowledge of Goethe, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, and above all of the Fathers, to whom de Lubac pointed me, would be for the working out of my theology. The chief postulate of my work Herrlichkeit [Glory of the Lord] was the capacity to see a ‘form’ in its interconnected wholeness. I wanted to apply Goethe’s way of seeing to the phenomenon of Jesus and the convergence of New Testament theologies. The Fathers had a similar way of seeing, which retains its validity despite the whole modern tendency to analyze everything.”