Soldier

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In the First World War , more widespread in the Second World War and partly also in the post-war period until today, Landser was used to refer to German army soldiers who were simply popular or pretending to be popular.

Unexplained etymology

Before the First World War there are isolated documents with the spelling Lanzer . According to Pfeifer, the term "originated among Saxon soldiers in the sense of 'compatriot' " at the end of the 19th century . The manual of the soldier language of 1905 states: "The Saxons in particular mutually call each other Lanzer (" Guten Tag, Lanzer ") and are therefore generally called that by the Prussians." In 1907, Lanzer is given alongside comrade for soldier. In 1910, a handbook for the language of the Pennäler in Saxony named Lanzer for Soldier.

From the beginning, different information can be found about the origin of the word, which was widely used in German during the First World War through the language of the soldiers , meaning “soldier”. As is not unusual for such a jargon expression, various folk etymological explanations are offered. The explanations agree that Landser is a shortening of a longer word.

Kluge considers it possible to connect the word to Lanz (t) in Lanzknecht . Duden online connects the word to “Lanz”, a short form of “Lanzknecht”, this in turn an early New High German spelling for Landsknecht based on Lanze or Lanze (military association) . Even the pocket dictionary of the German language by Daniel Sanders leads Lanzener, Lanzer as a lance armed . The Leipziger Zeitung sees this as a shortening of compatriot. The Saxon soldiers are said to have addressed each other with "Landser" "originally probably a Landsknecht, but then used as a compatriot", which the Prussians would have taken over. Georg von Ompteda emphasizes: Landser means “nothing more than compatriot”. The field gray Büchmann from 1916 places Landser next to a stretch of land .

In 1941, the Neue Brockhaus simply wrote under Landser "Soldier language: Soldat". In 1945 the word "Landser" was classified in the monthly booklets for German teaching of the University of Wisconsin as the common one for soldiers at the time. According to the Bertelsmann Volkslexikon of 1956, the word Landser stands for “compatriot” and “soldier”.

Journalistic use

A query of the digitized image database with currently 200,000 images in the Federal Archives with the search term "Landser" yields only 12 finds of "Landser" despite the numerous images from propaganda companies (PK), which are often handed down with original captions. All pictures show Wehrmacht soldiers during leisure activities.

A query of the book titles of the German library for "Landser" beginning with the year 1917 results in 647 finds. The high proportion of humorous books is striking right from the start, such as: Humor for the merry Landser (1918) or Peter Purzelbaum : Landser und Muschkoten (1929). Only 8 book titles come from the time before National Socialism. During National Socialism, book production with the title component Landser in the meaning of soldier did not begin until 1940. Humorous or entertaining titles are also predominant here. Examples: Peter Brömse: Only for Landser: cheerful songs (1940) or the Landser lachen published by Alfred Schröter : New German soldiers' humor. The best cheerful war experiences from the radio show “Soldiers-Comrades” or from Korbinian Lechner with drawings by Franz Bleyer: Candelabra to target: equally useful as amusing, well-equipped and almost complete Landser lexicon with many suitable and some unsuitable quotations, both from the year 1940. 1944 appears in the 11th edition Landser lachen: Front humor of this war by Werner Lass and Hans-Adolf Weber. Between 1940 and 1945 44 Landser titles were published, which are now kept by the German Library. The "Landserhumor" had a fixed position in the Nazi war propaganda with a defined task. One of the stylistic elements used by fonts such as “Landser lachen” were fake field post letters in dialect, which simulated the “simple Landser” and thus provided the soldiers with patterns for interpreting their war experiences. The series was published in large numbers. The remaining 500 or more titles in the German Library come from post-war production. Here is Landser laugh again: Hans-Jürgen Linden's experience and hearing between front and stage from 1954 the earliest use of the word Landser in a book title after 1945, until 1957 the Groschenheft series Der Landser starts, which includes the majority of the remaining titles, including the side rows . In his detailed analysis of the “Landser” magazine series, Klaus F. Geiger points out the function and adoption of “Landser humor” as a motif. In addition to comic scenes and eroticism, country humor is one of the basic elements that belong to his analysis grid.

See also

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Landser  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Pfeifer [Head]: Etymological Dictionary of German . 2nd revised and expanded edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-423-03358-4 . , Keyword "country".
  2. ^ Paul Horn: The German soldier language. 1905, p. 24 ( excerpt ).
  3. ^ Robert Douffet: German word research and word studies. 1907, p. 189 ( excerpt ).
  4. ^ Rudolf Eilenberger: Pennälerssprache: development, vocabulary and dictionary. 1910, pp. 17, 18, 59 ( text excerpts ).
  5. ^ Friedrich Kluge, edited by Elmar Seebold: Etymological Dictionary of the German Language . 24th, revised and expanded edition. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2001, ISBN 3-11-017473-1 . Keyword: "Landsknecht", p. 556.
  6. ^ Duden online: Landser
  7. ^ Daniel Sanders: Concise dictionary of the German language . 8., rework. u. presumably edition by Ernst Wülfing. Leipzig / Vienna 1912, p. 394.
  8. ^ Leipziger Zeitung (around 1914/18)
  9. ↑ Scientific supplements to the magazine of the German Language Association (around 1914/18), p. 310.
  10. ^ Georg Freiherr von Ompteda : Saxony in the field (Eastern Front). Berlin 1916, p. 84 ( excerpt ).
  11. ↑ Der Feldgraue Buechmann: winged power words from the language of the soldiers. 1916, p. 27. "Feldgrauer = Landser, Landstrich"
  12. ↑ The New Brockhaus. Third volume, Brockhaus, Leipzig 1941, p. 17.
  13. ^ Monthly books for German teaching, University of Wisconsin, 1945 ( excerpt ).
  14. ^ Bertelsmann Lexikon-Redaktion: Bertelsmann Volkslexikon. C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Gütersloh 1956, p. 1035.
  15. ↑ http://www.bild.bundesarchiv.de/ queried on September 29, 2015
  16. ↑ https://portal.dnb.de/opac.htm?method=simpleSearch&query=%22landser%22+&cqlMode=true&sortOrderIndex=jhr_asc accessed on September 30, 2015
  17. ↑ Martina Kessel : Writing violence. “German humor” in both world wars. In: Wolfgang Hardtwig : Orders in the crisis: On the political cultural history of Germany 1900-1933. Munich 2007, pp. 229–260, especially p. 244.
  18. ^ Ernst Fischer , Reinhard Wittmann : History of the German book trade in the 19th and 20th centuries. Volume 3: Third Reich, Part 1. 2005 ( online ).
  19. ↑ https://portal.dnb.de/opac.htm?method=simpleSearch&query=%22landser%22+&cqlMode=true&sortOrderIndex=jhr_asc accessed on September 30, 2015
  20. ↑ Klaus F. Geiger: War novels in the FRG. Content and functions. Tübingen 1974, pp. 72-76.