Understand station

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The phrase always understand station or just understand station means not to understand anything or not wanting to understand anything.

origin

The origin of the phrase, which was particularly fashionable in Berlin in the 1920s , is unclear. The Duden supposes that "someone who has the train station in mind as the starting point for a trip can no longer think of anything else and does not listen attentively." According to other dictionaries, it was created during the First World War . For the war-weary soldiers, the station has become a symbol of home leave.

Early evidence

In 1923, the KPD Reichstag deputy Emil Höllein took up the phrase in a plenary debate: “… yes, you don't want to hear anything. When things like that happen, you always hear: train station. "

In the novels by Hans Fallada in the 1930s, the phrase is written: In Whoever eats from a tin bowl it says: “'I always understand the train station,' he said. 'The train station is not that bad,' she said, 'when someone has to pile up.' "In Wolf Among Wolves , Fallada names the phrase twice as typical of the inflation period:" Did you say something? I always understand the station. Huh-huh-huh. Meier dutifully laughs at the most popular saying of the time. ”Or“ 'I always understand the train station,' said Amanda with the most popular saying of the time, and that meant exactly what her mother meant by 'Nightingale, I hear you trap!' had meant. "

In 1935 the phrase is explained in a linguistic journal: "If someone is very eager to explain something to the other, wants something from him urgently, and you pretend you don't understand him, you want to tease him, annoy him, they say, instead of answering him [sic!]: I always understand train station (or fried potatoes ). In a nutshell - which does not do justice to the teasing or annoying undertone - means understanding the station : say what you want, explain as much as you like. I do n't want to understand you ”(Fallada).

Extensions

Phrases like “I only understand train station and suitcase theft” or “train station and suitcase theft” allude to lack of understanding or inattention.

literature

  • Duden - The dictionary of origin. 4th edition. Mannheim 2006
  • Olga Ejikhine: Taken literally: the phrasebook through the world of idioms . 2005, ISBN 90-77713-05-0 .
  • Regina Hessky; Stefan Ettinger: German idioms: a dictionary and exercise book for advanced learners . Gunter Narr Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-8233-4960-0 .

Web links

Wiktionary: only understand train station  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Duden - The dictionary of origin. 4th edition. Mannheim 2006, p. 64
  2. ↑ Kurt Krüger-Lorenzen: Shot from the pistol (=  German idioms, and what's behind it . Volume 2 ). Econ, Düsseldorf 1966, p. 44 f .
  3. ↑ Lutz Röhrich : Lexicon of the proverbial sayings . tape 1 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1973, ISBN 3-451-16629-1 , p. 92 .
  4. ↑ Olga Ejikhine: Taken literally: The phrasebook through the world of idioms . 2005, ISBN 90-77713-05-0 , pp. 103 (last column has the same text as Röhrich 1973, p. 92).
  5. ^ Negotiations of the German Reichstag. 305th meeting of February 22, 1923. Berlin, Volume 358, p. 9829
  6. ↑ Hans Fallada: Whoever eats out of a tin bowl. Original edition 1934, here Reinbek 1952, p. 344. Quoted from Thomas Hengartner: The train station as the focus of urban life? Folklore reflections on an urban phenomenon par excellence. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore. Volume 90, 1994, p. 205, note.
  7. ↑ Hans Fallada: Wolf among wolves . Original edition 1937. Quoted from the Berlin 1962 edition, pp. 129, 290
  8. ↑ Moderna språk. Volume 29. Gävle 1935, p. 144, note 3
  9. ↑ Germany 1990 . Volume 57. Press and Information Office of the Federal Government, Bonn 1993, books.google.de