List of winged words / T

Winged words A. B. C. D. E. F. G H I. J K L. M. N O P Q R. S. T U V W. Y Z

Tabula rasa

Writing board with stylus

Tabula rasa (Latin: scraped-off writing board) actually means: blank board (also: blank sheet). The soul in its original state - before it received impressions from the outside world - was hereby referred to.

In the concrete sense, tabula rasa was a wax-covered writing board in antiquity , from which the writing was completely removed after writing.

The comparison of the soul with the writable wax tablet comes from Plato . A comparison between the soul and a wax tablet can also be found in Aristotle . John Locke uses this notion as a metaphor for the human mind when a child is born. The starting point for knowledge is sensual perception. The mind is only shaped by experience in the course of life.

The sentence is often used in the misunderstood sense of "clear the table".

The gates can criticize, but they cannot do better.

These words paraphrase the formerly popular poem Die neue Eva (1788) by the Berlin writer August Friedrich Ernst Langbein , which ends with the following lines:

"The fools can blame them, but they cannot
act smarter."

Day of the lord

This outdated expression for Sunday is the translation of the Latin dominica dies , which took the place of the pagan name dies solis (day of the sun) in the 4th century . The Greek form was Κυριακή (kyriake).

The first day dedicated to the sun was originally called hêméra Hêliou in Greek. When the Germans took over the weekly division, they translated the term Old High German sunnûntag. Christianity reinterpreted the day. In Romance languages, the church Latin name day of the Lord prevailed, so French dimanche .

Ludwig Uhland's poem Schäfer's Sunday Song begins and ends with these words:

“This is the day of the Lord!
I'm alone in the hallway,
just one more morning bell!
Now silence near and far.

I kneel here adoring.
O sweet gray! secret woe!
As if many were kneeling unseen
and praying with me.

The sky, near and far,
it is so clear and solemn,
so whole, as if it wanted to open up.
This is the day of the Lord! "

Tam de se iudex iudicat quam de reo

A Latin phrase that goes back to Publilius Syrus : "A judge judges himself as well as the accused" or "The judge also pronounces the judgment".

Tand, Tand is the creation of human hands.

Bridge on the Tay

In his poem Die Brück 'am Tay (1880) Theodor Fontane describes the railway accident on the Firth of Tay Bridge in Scotland. The forces of nature speak to each other as witches at the beginning and the end of the poem. Both sections end with the line:

" Tand, Tand
is the creation of human hands ."

In addition to realistic individual features, Fontane also included literary Scottish motifs, such as the meeting of the witches from William Shakespeare's drama Macbeth . He puts his conclusion in the mouth of one of the witches.

Tand stands for a pretty thing that has no value, which in this case means the bridge that corresponded to the 19th century belief in progress.

Tant de bruit for one omelette.

The saying (So ​​much ado about an omelette ) is attributed to the French writer Jacques Vallée Des Barreaux (1599–1673). He had thus commented on a violent thunderstorm that fell over an inn at the precise moment when the pious landlord reluctantly served the omelette with bacon that Des Barreaux had ordered in disregard of the Friday fasting requirement .

This corresponds to the saying Much Ado About Nothing , which is also the title of a Shakespeare comedy .

"Ledergerber, Elmar (S, ZH), for the Commission: I am almost inclined to say: 'Tant de bruit pour une omelette.' Mr Randegger, the opinion you are expressing largely corresponds to that of the Commission. "

dance on the volcano

Deburau as Pierrot

The overthrow of the Bourbons was announced by Narcisse-Achille de Salvandy , French envoy to Naples, in 1830 when he attended a ball given by the Duke of Orléans in honor of his brother-in-law, the King of Naples . Salvandy later described it this way:

“As I passed the Duke of Orléans, who was being complimented on all sides for the splendor of his festival, I said the same word to him which the newspapers repeated the following day: 'This is a very Neapolitan festival, my Prince, we are dancing on a Vulcan. '" (" Nous dansons sur un volcan. ")

Tanz auf dem Vulkan is a German feature film from 1938, whichtells the storyof the charismatic actor Jean-Gaspard Deburau , who performs couplets in which he ridicules King Charles X, who is extremely unpopular with the people. He also had quatrains he wrote that reviled the king, printed underground and distributed throughout Paris. So he comes into the sights of the state power. But he also gets in the king's way privately: Debureau adores and loves Countess Héloise de Cambouilly, who was spied on by Charles X as a favorite.

In the end, Deburau is sentenced to death. On the way to the scaffold, Debureau sings his couplets again and calls on the citizens for a coup. The plan succeeds, the rousing melodies induce the people to free Debureau, and when even the soldiers of Charles X ally with the rebels, the king is overthrown and fled abroad.

Touched a thousand times

These words are part of the chorus of the hit 1000 and 1 Nacht , with which Klaus Lage became famous in 1984:

“Touched a thousand times, nothing happened a thousand times.
A thousand and one nights, and it made 'Zoom'. "

The text was written by Klaus Lage with the politician and musician Diether Dehm , who has been a member of the German Bundestag for Die Linke since 2005.

Thousand and one Night

illustration

A thousand and one nights ( Persian هزار و يك شب hazār-o-yak šab , Arabic الف ليلة وليلة alf layla wa-layla ) is a collection of oriental stories and at the same time a classic of world literature . It comprises more than 300 stories that are held together by a framework plot and were first translated into French in the 18th century.

The framework tells that King Shahriyâr is so shocked by his wife's infidelity that he instructs his vizier to bring him a new virgin every night, who will be killed the next morning. After a while, Scheherazade , the vizier's daughter, wants to end the killing. She begins telling stories to the king; at the end of the night it has reached such an exciting point that the king desperately wants to hear the continuation and postpones the execution. The following night Scheherazade continues the story, interrupting again in the morning at an exciting point. After a thousand and one nights, the king grants her grace.

When one speaks of a "fairy tale from the Arabian Nights" today, one is usually alluding to the fantastic (but also the invented) of a process:

• "India - a fairy tale from a thousand and one nights"
• "The Sahara hostages (a fairy tale from a thousand and one nights?)"
• "Diverse and colorful, like a fairy tale from One Thousand and One Nights, the Emirates present themselves to the visitor."

Thaw period

Thaw (Russian: Оттепель; Ottepel ) was a novel by the Russian writer Ilja Ehrenburg from 1954, which gave its name to an entire epoch of Soviet cultural policy, namely the liberalization after the death of Josef Stalin ( thaw period ).

Many political prisoners were released and some were rehabilitated. The 30,000 German prisoners of war still imprisoned were also allowed to return. The thaw did not last long, however. With the suppression of the popular uprising in Hungary in 1956, many hopes for further opening up were buried.

Divide and conquer!

Divide and rule (Latin: divide et impera) is supposedly a saying of the French King Louis XI. , it may even go back to Julius Caesar . It stands for the principle of using one's own opponents and their disagreement for one's own purposes, for example to exercise power. It is important that disagreement among the opponents is encouraged or even caused so that they are easier to defeat in individual, smaller groups. Goethe formulates a counter-proposal in proverbial terms :

“Split and command! Good word. - Club and manage! Better hoard. "

Tempi passati!

It is with these Italian words (German: Past times! ) That the Roman-German Emperor Joseph II. Federico Zuccari's painting in the hall of the Grand Council in the Doge's Palace of Venice is said to have commented on how Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa himself was on July 24th, 1177 Pope Alexander III kneels in front of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice . subjugated. It was hoped, writes Karol Fryderyk Wojda in the thirteenth of his letters about Italy, written in 1798 and 1799 , that this painting would be hidden from the emperor. But he became aware of it himself, stopped in front of it and after looking at it for a while, he left it with the words: "tempi passati!"

The quote means as much as the times are gone and can express both regret and relief.

Tempora mutantur.

The Latin hexameter " Tempora mutantur , nos et mutamur in illis" ("Times change and we change in them") goes back to a medieval model. However, the source of this saying is unknown.

A variant of the saying is attributed to Emperor Lothar I , the grandson of Charlemagne , by the Flemish scholar Jan Gruters :

"Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis."

"Everything changes and we change with it."

Those who use these words today mostly want to express that modern times have not become alien to them, but that they have also changed or found themselves in accordance with them.

Terra incognita

World map by Rumold Mercator with the southern continent

The Latin term terra incognita (unknown land) is the name for areas that have not yet been mapped or described. This designation can be found on historical maps in those regions that were still unexplored. In some places, mythical creatures were drawn in at these places.

The Terra Australis incognita (unknown southern land ) , from which the name Australia is derived, was a large land mass in the southern hemisphere that the ancient geographer Claudius Ptolemy postulated in his work Geographike Hyphegesis as a counterweight to the northern continents. The adoption of the name Australia is probably the reason why the Antarctic was not given the name Terra Australis, which it actually deserved.

Terra Incognita is also a series of Deutsche Welle that the broadcaster itself writes:

"The 24 episodes of Terra Incognita take you to well-known regions, but also to remote corners of Europe."

The term is used in different contexts:

• "Terra incognita. Bulgarian literature in the 20th century "
• "Terra incognita - Turkey"
• "University and regional economy - from terra incognita to value-adding community."

The games must go on

The President of the International Olympic Committee Avery Brundage said this sentence in English (“The Games must go on”) after the attack on Israel's Olympic team at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich . At this point, consideration was given to canceling the Olympics. After an interruption for half a day and after a memorial hour in the Olympic Stadium, Brundage allowed the games to continue. He said at the funeral:

“The games have to go on, we have to continue in our efforts to keep them pure and honest and to try to carry the athletes' athletic attitude into other areas. We hereby declare this day to be the day of mourning and will continue all events one day later than originally planned. "

The continuation was also approved by the Israeli government. Even so, the decision was criticized, but few athletes left. The Israeli Olympic team left Munich after the failed liberation campaign.

The President of the Organizing Committee, Willi Daume , justified the decision not to cancel the games with the following words:

"So much has been killed - we didn't want to allow the terrorists to kill the games too."

The Germans to the Front!

Carl Röchling : The Germans to the Front

Railway carriage 1914 with the inscription The Germans to the front

The English exclamation "The Germans to the front" (The Germans to the front!) To the British Admiral Sir Edward Hobart Seymour come, the commander of the 2,066-strong European Expeditionary Force during the Boxer Rebellion in China. Seymour marched from the Chinese port city of Tianjin to free the trapped foreigners in the capital Beijing . However, Seymour was stopped by boxers, Chinese fighters, and had to admit defeat. Thereupon he withdrew to Tianjin and is said to have used these words to send German marine infantry under the command of Guido von Usedom to the head of the troops. It is unclear whether Seymour issued the order himself.

Postcards with these words and a corresponding picture of the same title were widespread in Germany before the First World War. The headline The Germans to the front! is used again and again when the media report on international deployments of the German Bundeswehr in crisis areas. Heinrich Jaenecke writes in Stern magazine :

“The English emergency call turned into a German triumph. "Where other peoples' flags are waving, Germany shine proudly, including your banner," said a patriotic poem at the time.
So now our banner should shine in the Hindu Kush. Even under Hitler, German soldiers were not that far away from home, and the letters from the field post from Uzbekistan and the surrounding wastelands will certainly have a high collector's value later on. "

There's No Business Like Show Business.

This much-quoted English sentence (There is no industry like the show industry.) Is the title of a song from the musical Annie Get Your Gun by the American composer Irving Berlin . The song says:

"There's no business like show business
Like no business I know"

It was rumored that this song, which would later become famous, was almost not performed due to rejection by producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II .

The musical Rhythm in the Blood (English: There's No Business Like Show Business ) tells the story of an artist family during the depression in the USA. In the famous final song There's No Business Like Show Business , Marilyn Monroe can be seen singing, but in the recording studio her voice was replaced by Dolores Gray's because Monroe was under contract with another record company.

The song's title is often quoted when it comes to specifics of the show industry. So it says about the supposed star Daddy Blue in the song of the same name by Reinhard Mey :

“But in the end, at all prices, they had simply underestimated us, the stupid audience, who stubbornly refused to buy 'Come on, cheer up, baby', because once even the last fool feels charred, then you have them Show repeated twice, and when it still didn't work out, Daddy Blue was left to die very quietly, theres no business, like show business. "

Think different!

Think Different (Think different!) Was an English slogan for Apple Computer in 1997. This campaign tried to Apple from IBM delineate whose slogan simply "Think" (Think!) Was.

In August 1997, the advertising agency TBWA presented Apple co-founder Steve Jobs with a draft of a campaign in which Dreamworks employees were originally supposed to be shown how they work on their Mac computers. Jobs suggested using black and white portraits of well-known personalities instead of employees and personally saw to it that personalities such as Joan Baez , an ex-girlfriend of Jobs, or Yoko Ono , a former neighbor of Jobs, used theirs Consented to portraits in this advertising campaign. The tagline continued to be used even after Apple's advertising campaign ended.

Animals look at you.

This is the title of a photo book from 1928 by the painter and writer Paul Eipper , who is best known for books about animals.

In four essays, especially the large essay Animals look at you (1987), the writer Hans Wollschläger deals with the relationship between humans and their fellow creatures, as the animal protection law of the Federal Republic of Germany calls them.

The quote is used today in variously modified forms, especially when you are confronted with other living beings whose looks you feel addressed in a certain way:

• "Children look at you: the most beautiful children's pictures from Titian to Picasso"
• "Photo reporter: crying children look at you"
• "Buildings look at you." (Architecture)
• "Cows see you."

Eipper's title found a parodic use in a book by Kurt Tucholsky : A collage by John Heartfield showed eight German generals adorned with religious orders, the caption was Animals look at you .

Time to say goodbye

Time to Say Goodbye (time to say goodbye) is the English title of the Italian song Con te partirò (text by Lucio Quarantotto). The chorus begins as follows:

"Time to say goodbye.
Paesi che non ho mai
veduto e vissuto con te,
adesso si li vivrò. "

The song was first sung by Andrea Bocelli at the 1995 Sanremo Festival . The 1996 recording - partly in English - with Andrea Bocelli and the soprano Sarah Brightman Time to Say Goodbye had worldwide success . In Germany it became the best-selling single of all time after accompanying the boxing match between Henry Maske and Virgil Hill on November 23, 1996.

Ink-blotchy seculum.

In Friedrich Schiller's play Die Räuber , Karl Moor begins his first appearance in the second scene of the first act with the words:

“I disgusted with this ink-splattering Saeculum when I read about great people in my Plutarch . [...] Ugh! Ugh about the feeble castrato century "

Tobias six, verse three

the angel, Tobias and the fish

"Tobias six, verse three" used to be said to reprimand an impolite yawn in company . This alludes to a passage from the Bible from the Book of Tobit (6: 3), where it says:

"O Lord, he wants to eat me!"

The whole bible quote is:

" Tobias was frightened and shouted in a loud voice:" O Lord, he wants to eat me! "
And the angel said to him: Take him by the gills and pull him out! "

There is a joke that replies with another Bible quote: " Acts 10, verse 14" . There it says:

"Lord, I have never eaten anything mean or unclean."

O death, where is thy sting?

This rhetorical question comes from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians . The apostle Paul writes to the Christian community in Corinth :

“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is your victory? ” 1 Cor 15.55  EU

Death has lost its horror through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection, which makes resurrection and eternal life possible for all people.

Gate, gate, gate ... I am foolish!

This saying comes from the Austrian sports reporter Edi Finger senior . In 1978 he commented on the soccer world championship game between Germany and Austria in Cordoba for ORF radio . With his spectacular live report, in particular with his booming voice, “Tooor, Tooor, Tooor, […] I wer 'narrisch (I'm going crazy)!” At the winning goal of the Austrians by Hans Krankl , the famous reporter became the closest Day to be a star, his exclamation got cult status. The saying has meanwhile also found its way into advertising, e.g. B. as an advertising jingle, ring tone or imprint on various merchandising articles On the occasion of the European Championships in 2008 a CD of the same name was sold, on which his son Edi Finger jun. had contributed.

An excerpt from the report:

"There comes Krankl [...] into the penalty area - shot ... Tooor, Tooor, Tooor, Tooor, Tooor, Tooor! I am foolish! Krankl shoots - 3-2 for Austria! Ladies and gentlemen, we fall around our necks; the colleague Rippel, the graduate engineer Posch - we piss off. 3: 2 for Austria with a great goal from our Krankl. He covered it all over, ladies and gentlemen. And wait a little, wait no a little; then maybe we can allow ourselves a fourth. "

Total war

Total war is a term from National Socialism that was used by Joseph Goebbels on February 18, 1943 during the Sportpalast speech in the Berlin Sportpalast . In a more general sense, it describes the tendency observed in the 19th and 20th centuries to make extensive use of social resources for industrialized warfare.

The Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz coined the term "absolute war". Ernst Jünger spoke of total mobilization .

Total state

This expression goes back to the controversial constitutional lawyer Carl Schmitt , who propagated this expression in his 1932 work The Concept of the Political . The total state stands for an anti-parliamentary and anti-liberal state model . Schmitt advocated a strong state based on a free economy . Here Schmitt's idea met in many points with ordoliberalism, especially with Alexander Rustow , who wrote:

“The phenomenon that Carl Schmitt called the 'total state' following Ernst Jünger [...] is in fact the exact opposite of it: not state omnipotence, but state powerlessness. It is a sign of the most pathetic weakness of the state, a weakness that can no longer withstand the united onslaught of interested parties. The state is being torn apart by the greedy interested parties. [...] What is going on here, even more intolerable in terms of state policy than economic policy, is under the motto: 'The state as booty'. "

Today there is a warning against a total state if there is a fear of excessive state controls.

Indolence of heart

Kaspar Hauser

Caspar Hauser or The Inertia of the Heart (1908) was the title of a novel by Jakob Wassermann , who in the 1920srevivedresearch into the origins of the foundling Kaspar Hauser with this novel. The phrase “sluggishness of the heart” is a poetic paraphrase for the indifference of fellow human beings who were responsible for Kaspar Hauser's death.

One of the seven deadly sins is Acedia, or the indolence of the heart . Clara reads the cause of death in the autopsy protocol: Caspar's side wall of his heart had been pierced and he was bleeding to death inside. Clara goes to the teacher Quandt and says "trembling and cold: murderer" . Quandt maintains that Caspar was a fraud.

Acedia also includes a state of mind within the court of meaning of sadness, melancholy and weariness. According to Thomas Aquinas, the daughters of acedia (filiae acediae) are :

1. malitia (malice)
2. rancor (resentment, rebellion)
3. pusillanimitas (faintheartedness)
4. desperatio (despair)
5. torpor (dull indifference)
6. evagatio mentis (wandering restlessness of the mind)

Tears do not lie.

Tears don't lie is a hit that Michael Holm was successful with in 1974. In the text of the hit it says:

"Turn around once,
look into your face
and you will see:
tears don't lie."

The melody comes from the wordless song Soleado by Ciro Dammicco. Various other texts were sung to this melody, for example the Christmas carol When a child is born by Johnny Mathis .

The comedian Otto Waalkes parodied the title Danes Don't Lie in a song in which someone messes with a Danish woman and is threatened with a beating by her boyfriend. The result is:

"Look at
your face in the mirror in the hospital
and you'll see that
Danes don't lie"

The news magazine Der Spiegel took up the title Danes do not lie in 2005 when Heide Simonis wanted to be elected Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein by members of the Südschleswigschen Voters' Association (the parliamentary representation of the Danish minority) .

Never drank another drop.

This verse ends the ballad The King in Thule (1774), which Goethe later inserted into the evening of Faust I (1808), where it is sung by Gretchen. The poem was set to music by Franz Liszt and Franz Schubert . It begins with the following verses:

There was a king in Thule,
loyal to the grave,
To whom his lover gave
a golden cup as he died.

The last stanza says of the mug thrown into the water:

He saw him fall, drink
and sink deep into the sea,
his eyes would sink,
never drank a drop more.

The quote is often used jokingly to note that someone has stopped drinking alcohol.

Don't trust anyone over thirty!

This slogan comes from the protest movement of the 1960s and was expressed in slogans that were directed against deadlocked structures.

Don't trust anyone over thirty. The sixty-eight is also the title of a comic by Gerhard Seyfried , in which the generation of 68 is depicted in a satirical way.

Since 40-year-olds are often too old to get a job in the fast-moving information society, a 35-year-old can be too old for some activities. The journalist Sylvia Englert threw in an interview with Prof. Dr. In the supplement to the Süddeutsche Zeitung of September 15, 2001, Johann Behrens therefore asked whether the slogan “Don't trust anyone over thirty” will soon be valid again.

Trust, look who?

Dare! look! whom?

This German proverb goes back to a similar Latin phrase:

"Fide, sed cui, vide."

Dare! look! whom? is a leaflet written by Gustav Kittler in 1878, which turns against the defamation of the social democracy.

Trust! look who? is the title of a poem by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben , which begins with the following stanza:

“The winch said to the fly:
O come to my house!
It is good to live with me,
come, sleep and rest. "

The fly then moves in with the winch , but it cannot get out the next day.

Trust, look who? are the closing words of the fable The Lion and the Goat by Aesop : The lion praises the good grass next to him, but the goat who keeps a distance sees through his intention to eat it.

There is a comedy with this title by Johann Christian Brandes (Frankfurt 1770). There is also a comedy by Karl Schall entitled Trau, schau, who? (1812) documented. A UFA short film (1936) by Alwin Elling also used this title. Trust, look who! is the title of a waltz by Johann Strauss (Sohn) (1895).

Don't trust any statistics that you haven't faked yourself.

The quip sharpened the popular belief with statistics to leave everything to prove cynical in a paradoxical way. Its origin is unclear. Winston Churchill is often presented as the author, but no evidence has yet been found for this. The quote is completely unknown in Churchill's homeland. In 2004 Werner Barke published the following hypothesis:

Churchill was convinced that Hitler's success statistics were unbelievable. On Goebbels ' instructions, the German press was supposed to portray Churchill as a liar who himself forged numbers. To combine these two contradicting statements paradoxically as a point against Churchill in the formulation "I only believe the statistics that I have falsified myself" is only a small step.

Who was the first to combine and publish the two statements is currently unknown. Even the intricate ways in which the basic idea that statistics - by or according to Churchill could be misused for falsification - finally found its way into the post-war press, from there into reference books, from there into newspapers and speeches, can still be seen today do not trace.

In another article on the subject, Barke later stated even more pointedly:

The alleged Churchill quote "I only believe the statistics that I have falsified" (...), which is often used in speeches and writings, has its roots in the German Reich Propaganda Ministry in 1940/41. In his instructions to the press, which are still documented today, as well as in his diary entries, there are more than two dozen statements by the Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, which agree with the "quote" in the accusation of forgery.

However, the first publications of the bon mot on the belief only in falsified statistics were recognizable neither to Churchill nor to Goebbels and his Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . In the, as far as can be seen, very first, an essay Ameisenstaat oder Sintflut by Hanns-Erich Haack, which the Deutsche Rundschau published in 1946, it only says:

• So what use is it when certain German regions try to convince the world that they are “less” to blame for the Nazi disaster than their brothers across the river? They have already learned so much that they only believe the statistics that they have forged themselves.

In a book published in 1967 the bon mot was issued as a saying of Bishop Otto Dibelius , who died on January 31, 1967 :

• “Church statistics.” […] “There must be something like that. You always have a pastor who has not done well. He can then do something like that. Besides, I only believe in the statistics that I falsified myself. ” - Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann: Anecdotes about Bishop Dibelius. Spirit and wit of a great cleric . Bechtle 1967.

At the session of the German Bundestag on November 29, 1979, the MP Werner Broll (CDU) mentioned the Federal Statistics Law and the 1st Statistics Adjustment Law without naming an author

• "Old saying, which you are probably also familiar with, that you should only believe the statistics that you have falsified yourself."

It was not until 1980, 35 years after the end of the Second World War and 15 years after Churchill's death, that this "saying" was, as far as can be ascertained, associated with Churchill for the first time, in a debate in the Swiss National Council :

• These statistics are certainly reliable. I have no doubt about it, but with such statistics one would be tempted to say with Churchill: "I only trust those statistics that I have forged myself."

No evidence was given. This also applies to the three attributions to Churchill in the following year 1981, which therefore cannot be taken seriously either:

• What did Winston Churchill say? "I only believe the statistics that I faked myself." - Peter Koch : Wahnsinn armor . star book published by Gruner + Jahr Hamburg 1981.
• Everyone knows what the information content of statistics is. Churchill once said: "Don't trust any statistics that you haven't falsified yourself." - Marianne Kohnen: Relationship between wages and productivity . Deutsche Bauzeitung 1981, p. 110.
• "Churchill's clever bon mot about statistics - you can only believe statistics that you have falsified yourself - can be applied to all human knowledge." - Alberto Manguel , Gianni Guadalupi: From Atlantis to Utopia. A guide to the imaginary settings of world literature. Christian Verlag Munich 1981, p. 5.

Daydreams at French chimneys

Richard von Volkmann

The doctor and writer Richard von Volkmann wrote fairy tales in which he combined elements of folk and art fairy tales. A collection of fairy tales created in France during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, which he published under a pseudonym with the title Dreams on French chimneys , has become particularly well known .

Volkmann wrote these fairy tales in hospitals where he worked as a military doctor and enclosed them with his letters back home. They first appeared in print in 1871 and quickly became a fairy tale classic. The collection has been reprinted more than 300 times, with more than a million copies printed. However, these romantic fairy tales are a bit forgotten today.

The fairy tales in this collection include:

• The rattle stork fairy tale
• The three sisters with the glass hearts
• From the invisible kingdoms
• How Christoph and Bärbel always wished to get past each other

Stair joke of world history

A stair joke (French: "esprit d'escalier" ) is a witty thought that occurs to someone a moment too late ("when going out on the stairs") and which can no longer be brought forward.

In German, this term was popularized by William Lewis Hertslet's 1882 bestseller The Staircase Joke of World History . Hertslet was referring to the tendency to anecdotally embellish historical events in retrospect; in his book he exposes such anecdotes.

Today the expression stair joke is also used for the irony of fate .

Tres faciunt collegium

The Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I initiated a collection of legislation that was later called the Corpus Juris Civilis . In their second book there is a passage where it says:

"Neratius Priscus tres faciunt existimat collegium."

("Neratius Priscus explains that three make up a quorum.")

This expresses that you need at least three people to form a society. Since the Middle Ages there has been a rule at universities that in addition to the lecturer, at least two students must be present in order for a lecture to be held.

In the Allgemeine Deutsche Kommersbuch there is a student song that begins as follows:

“Tres faciunt collegium!
the two of us and a cup!
Two are sitting, one is walking around
in our full number,
in our full number;
and we all three agree
that the juice of the grape is not water,
that the juice is not water. "

faithfully administrated

The bridal chorus begins with the words “Faithfully led” in the wedding march from Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin (1850):

Faithfully led, go
where the blessing of love keeps you!
Victorious courage, minne win
unite in loyalty to the most blessed couple.
Champion of virtue, go forward!
Adornment of the youth, go on!
The rustle of the feast has now escaped, the
bliss of the heart be won over to you!

This wedding march is very popular and is often played during church and civil wedding ceremonies.

Keep fit!

The trim yourself movement goes back to an advertising campaign launched by the German Sports Association in 1970. With the support of politics, health insurances and the economy, the fight against obesity and increasing circulatory diseases was declared under the motto “Exercise - through sport”.

With the 1972 Olympic Games, the fitness movement experienced a boom. 94 percent of the population and even 99 percent of all young people were familiar with the trim yourself campaign. The mascot of many fitness trails is "Trimmy", a friendly man with gym shorts and a thumbs up. Of the 1,500 facilities in Germany in the 1980s, many fell into disrepair as the fitness trails went out of fashion and instead jogging became a popular sport.

Trio infernal

Trio Infernal (French: Le trio infernal ) is a black comedy and a co-production by Germany, France and Italy from 1974 based on a novel by Solange Fasquelle . The "diabolical trio" consists of a French lawyer and two German sisters who commit insurance fraud in that the lawyer procures husbands for the two women, who he then has to kill.

The plot is based on an authentic case from the 1930s. Today the film title is mostly used jokingly to characterize three people who belong together and who are feared because of their activities.

Do what you can not resist!

In the first scene of Schiller's drama Wilhelm Tell (1804), Tell, Konrad Baumgarten, following the “rider of the bailiff”, decided to cross over to the other bank of Lake Lucerne in spite of an approaching storm . If he does not come back alive, he asks:

Compatriot, you comfort
my wife, when something human happens to me,
I've done what I couldn't help but do.

The formulation can already be found in the pamphlet A Dialogus or Conversation of Several Persons from the Interim of Erasmus Alberus from 1548:

"Go there, and do what you cannot help but do bad enough."

In this sense, “do what you can't leave” is mostly used today as an expression of resigned criticism of the intentions of the person addressed.

Problem of the object

The phrase comes from the 1878 novel Auch Eine. A travel acquaintance of the philosopher Friedrich Theodor Vischer . The travel acquaintance A. E. tells the narrator about his constant guerrilla warfare with all sorts of everyday things, for example about the key he looked for in his room for half an hour this morning and then finally found under the foot of the candlestick:

“Who can now think about who can guess who is exercising such superhuman caution to avoid such treachery of the object! [...] From daybreak until late at night, as long as someone is around the way, the object thinks of naughtiness, of malice. […] So everything lurks, pencil, pen, inkwell, paper, cigar, glass, lamp - everything, everything for the moment when you are not paying attention. "

The icing on the cake

The phrase “no icing on the cake” is based on the Gospel according to Matthew (5, 18). There it says:

"For verily, I say to you: Until heaven and earth pass away, not even an iota or a line should pass from the law, until everything is done."

In the original Greek text it reads:

"Ἀμὴν γὰρ λέγω ὑμῖν, ἕως ἂν παρέλθῃ ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ, ἰῶτα ἓν ἢ μία κεραία οὐ μὴ παραία οὐ μὴ παρέλάμθυ ἕές παντντντντητντντντντντητντντντντντντητντητντητντητντητντητντητντητντητντητντητντητντντητντητντητντητντητντ ντητν

In Martin Luther's translation it said:

"Until heaven and earth pass away, the smallest letter and the icing on the cake will not pass from the law until everything happens."

The point is that neither the smallest letter nor the smallest particle of such a letter should be changed. According to this, the "icing on the cake" indicates a high degree of accuracy.

Virtue wants to be encouraged, wickedness can be done alone

This Wilhelm Busch quote comes from the picture story Plisch and Plum (1882), when at the beginning of the seventh chapter father Fittig complains about his two sons Paul and Peter:

“ This ”, he thinks, “ has to be different!

Virtue will be encouraged ,

One can be wicked alone. "

It is understood in the introduction to a correct way of life, in which none of the valid moral laws are violated.

Does nothing! the Jew will be burned!

This sentence comes from Lessing's work Nathan the Wise and is uttered three times by the patriarch : “Do nothing! the Jew will be burned! ”. This phrase became the catchphrase that is used in the German press to this day. This describes an unrelenting rigorous approach and a lack of insight.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Georg Büchmann: Winged words . 11th edition 1879, p. 138 books.google .
   • Poems by August Friedrich Ernst Langbein . First part, Leipzig 1800, p. 63 books.google . With a "Preface - Written in March 1801: Cheap readers and legal art judges will not go unnoticed that I have endeavored to improve and refine this new edition of my poems collected in 1788. [...]" P. 3 f. books.google .
   • See also Carl Adolph Walder: All fools can censure; - but don't do better! Dramatized proverb. In: Smaller plays for social stages , Volume 1, 1793, p. 101 books.google
2. ^ Ludwig Uhland : Schäfers Sunday song . Quoted from Schäfer's Sunday song * poems by Ludwig Uhland. (No longer available online.) In: autoren-gedichte.de. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015 ; Retrieved January 18, 2015 . 
3. ↑ Büchmann: Winged words , since the third revised and enlarged edition in 1866 p. 204 BSB / MDZ . 19th edition books.google . Collection complete des oeuvres de M. [de Voltaire], tome 25: Questions sur l'Encyclopédie, tome 1. Genéve 1774 p. 434 books.google
4. ↑ Parliamentary Initiative (WAK-NR) Risk Capital. (No longer available online.) In: parlament.ch. January 19, 2013, archived from the original on January 18, 2015 ; Retrieved January 18, 2015 . 
5. ↑ Quoted from page 495 - Winged words. In: susning.nu. March 18, 2005, accessed January 18, 2015 . 
6. ↑ Quoted from the lyrics: Klaus Lage - touched a thousand times. (No longer available online.) In: magistrix.de. October 20, 2006, archived from the original on October 17, 2011 ; Retrieved January 18, 2015 . 
7. ^ Letters about Italy, written in 1798 and 1799 . Second volume. Leipzig 1802. pp. 259 f. ( limited preview in Google Book search)
8. ↑ Terra Incognita. (No longer available online.) In: dw-world.de. January 16, 2015, archived from the original on January 23, 2011 ; Retrieved January 18, 2015 . 
9. ↑ See Die Welt , Uwe Schmitt; Stefan Frank 2008, page 26.
10. ^ Avery Brundage during the funeral service on September 6, 1972. Quoted from "The games must go on" The funeral service ( Memento from August 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) In: olympia72.de
11. ↑ Thoralf Klein: "Germans to the Front!" In: Ulrich van der Heyden and Joachim Zeller (eds.): Colonialism in this country - A search for traces in Germany. Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-86680-269-8 , pp. 381-385.
12. ↑ ESSAY PAGE 1 OF 5 The Germans to the front! ( Memento from November 28, 2002 in the Internet Archive ) stern.de
13. ↑ Quoted from REINHARD MEY DADDY BLUE LYRICS ( Memento from June 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: gugalyrics.com
14. ↑ In: Deutschland, Deutschland über alles. A picture book by Kurt Tucholsky and many photographers. Assembled by John Heartfield . Neuer Deutscher Verlag, Berlin 1929, p. 63.
15. ↑ Quoted from lyrics: Andrea Bocelli - Time to say goodbye. In: magistrix.de. April 17, 2004, archived from the original on January 18, 2015 ; Retrieved January 18, 2015 . 
16. ↑ The robbers . 1st act, 2nd scene Schiller, Friedrich, Dramen, Die Räuber, 1st act, 2nd scene. In: zeno.org. Retrieved January 18, 2015 . 
17. ↑ Ralf Ptak : From Ordoliberalism to Social Market Economy, Stations of Neoliberalism in Germany . 2004, p. 36f.
18. ↑ Quoted after tears do not lie. In: lyricsdownload.com. Archived from the original on November 22, 2007 ; Retrieved January 18, 2015 . 
19. ↑ compare: Federal Agency for Civic Education: What makes us "look old" prematurely
20. ↑ Quoted from WiSo's collector blog - things I would like to remember ( Memento from June 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
21. ↑ See The Lion and the Goat. In: literaturnetz.org. May 30, 2009, accessed January 18, 2015 . 
22. ↑ books.google.de
23. ↑ books.google.de
24. ↑ Trust - look - whom. A criminal case of 1933 in the Internet Movie Database (English)
25. ↑ cf. in addition: Excerpt from Gerd Bosbach , Jens Jürgen Korff : Lies with numbers. How we are manipulated with statistics . 2011
26. ↑ Werner Barke: Churchill: "I only believe the statistics that I have forged myself ..." , Statistisches Landesamt Baden-Württemberg, monthly issue 2004-11.
27. ↑ Werner Barke: I only believe in statistics ... What Winston Churchill is supposed to have said about numbers and statistics - and what he really said . (25-page booklet). Ed .: State Statistical Office Baden-Württemberg. Item number 8055 11001. ISBN 3-923292-58-9 . 2011, 6th edition. P. 8
28. ^ Deutsche Rundschau 1946, pp. 137–147, p. 139 books.google .
    Hanns-Erich Haack (1906-1975) was the first permanent representative of the Federal Republic of Germany to Unesco in 1968/70 , cf. Handbook of Diplomacy p. 136 books.google
29. ↑ p. 79 books.google
30. ↑ Plenary Minutes 8/189 , p. 14918 (B)
31. ^ Official Bulletin of the Federal Assembly , 1980, p. 1116 books.google
32. ↑ p. 92 books.google
33. ↑ books.google
34. ^ Richard von Volkmann-Leander: Daydreams at French chimneys. In: literaturnetz.org. May 30, 2009, accessed January 18, 2015 . 
35. ^ Friedrich Schiller: Wilhelm Tell . zeno.org. Retrieved August 18, 2019.
36. ↑ Friedrich Theodor Vischer: Also one - Chapter 1. In: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved July 10, 2020 . 
37. ↑ Friedrich Theodor Vischer: Also one - Chapter 2. In: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved July 10, 2020 . 
38. ↑ Timo Hoyer: Virtue and education: the foundation of moral education in antiquity . Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2009, p. 9
39. ↑ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Nathan the Wise . zeno.org. Retrieved August 18, 2019.
40. ^ Georg Büchmann , continued by Walter Robert-tornow : Winged words. The treasure trove of quotations of the German people. 1898, p. 150 susning.nu .