Year-end wing figure

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Year-end wing figure is said to have been an official term for Christmas angels in the GDR . Whether this definition is correct or whether this term was only used ironically is debatable in the literature. Its origin is also unclear. In some areas the terms winged year-end figure , year-end winged pupa and year-end wing creature were also circulating . In addition, the year-end figure m. F. (with wings - Christmas angel), year-end figure o. F. (without wings - Santa Claus, miner etc.), year-end man and other variants known.

The creation of the term is sometimes the only ones in the GDR laid satirical magazine Eulenspiegel as used supposedly in the GDR trade name for a used for Christmas decoration angel figure, z. B. as Erzgebirge carving , attributed.

The word can be found in the 1986 book Wörtliche Anäubung by Eulenspiegel author Ernst Röhl , in which bureaucratic excesses of the GDR language are satirically targeted. According to the historian Bodo Mrozek , Röhl assumes that he did not invent the word, but actually saw it at a sales stand. Mrozek dedicated an extensive article to the word in the first volume of his book Lexicon of Threatened Words . In a search for Spiegel Online , Mrozek managed to find contemporary witnesses in the Ore Mountains and East Berlin who claim that the word, according to their memory, was used in the official GDR language. The exact origin cannot be proven to this day:

“Proof of the real existence of the socialist phantom word has still not been provided. It is possible that it is slumbering somewhere in an archive or a private collection. "

- Bodo Mrozek : word mystery "year-end wing figure". Who says that!

An earlier mention of the term can be found in 1985 in the magazine Geo Special : DDR . There the writer Helga Schütz describes the packaging of the Christmas production: "They are carefully put into export crates, like the pyramids, music boxes and angels, the year-end winged figures."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Birgit Wolf: Language in the GDR: A dictionary. 2000, ISBN 3-11-016427-2 , p. 107.
  2. ↑ a b Bodo Mrozek : word mystery "year-end wing figure". Who says that! Spiegel Online, December 25, 2006.
  3. ↑ Helga Schütz : My country, my temptation. In: Geo Special DDR. Gruner & Jahr, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-570-07508-7 , p. 38 ff., Here p. 40; limited preview in Google Book search.

See also