Muddle (verb)

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The verb mauscheln and the noun Mauschelei generally refer to fraudulent manipulations , inadmissible agreements and transactions on the fringes or beyond legality, especially in relation to the card game, fraud when shuffling or dealing the cards, i.e. a "game of negotiation".

Originally the word mauscheln was an anti-Semitic abuse, but is now also used in other contexts. It was first encountered in the 17th century, initially with the meaning “speak like a Jew; speaking Yiddish ”, later it became mainly in the sense of“ acting like a haggling Jew; cheat "used. It is derived from "Mauschel", a derogatory term for the "trading Jews", i.e. Jewish traders and Jews who moved around as peddlers , and thus ultimately from the Hebrew first name Moses / Moshe .

etymology

Wheeler had since the 17th century anti-Semitic nickname for the Jews and probably derives from Mausche , the Western Yiddish pronunciation of the name Moshe (Moses), from. Derived from this, Mauscheln initially referred to disparagingly the way in which a Mauschel speaks, which sounds indistinct for non-Jews - what was meant was the Yiddish language used by Ashkenazi Jews . The German dictionary , founded by the Brothers Grimm , stated in 1885 that the word comes from Bavarian "to deceive and cheat, to deal with secret and illicit business". Siegmund A. Wolf suspects in his dictionary of the crooks language a folk etymological approximation or connection with the verb “musseln” (“indistinctly speaking”).

Occasional attempts have been made to derive the word from Hebrew , in older lexicographies Mausche / Mauschel is related to the Hebrew mâschal "ruler" or "rule". In 1675, for example, Christ is represented as a "learned whore or parable preacher".

Another meaning for Mauscheln developed "to act like a haggling Jew", that is, to cheat. This dirty business, "according Judenart" was called then graft .

Word history

Since the first third of the 19th century, the word has referred to one of the central problems of Jewish emancipation : Were Jews in Germany able to abandon their religion as well as Jewish German and assimilate fully into the German majority society ? The Hamburg pedagogue Anton Rée of Jewish origin still considered it necessary in 1844 to publicly deny that Jews had “genuinely Palestinian language organs” and were therefore not able to speak German without an accent . However, he believed that the centuries of exclusion had degenerated the speech organs of Jews , a process that he declared to be reversible. He rejected the term mauscheln as anti-Jewish and preferred to speak of "Jewish dialect ".

The anti-Jewish pamphlet Der Mauscheljude , published around 1870, warns of an alleged Jewish world conspiracy . The book makes use of both tried and tested Christian anti-Judaism as well as the then emerging racist and anti-Semitic agitation patterns that were already similar to those of the National Socialists . In the 1880s, similar word formations such as "Groß-Mauschel", "international Mauschelthum", "Mauschel-Jude" and "Mauschel-Christ" were common in anti-Semitism .

The Nazis then used the term extensively in their propaganda . Julius Streichers Hetzblatt The striker put him z. B. to warn of " racial disgrace " against innocent German girls:

“Take care of your children! Warn them of the Jew, of the devil in human form! Educate them about the perishability of the mixed Asian people! Tells you that they don't follow strangers, no matter how tempting they are. "

In 1936 by Elvira Bauer in the Stürmer-Verlag children's book Trau no fox on green heath and no Jew in his oath! A picture book for young and old , which was meant to convey the National Socialist racial ideology to children at the same time as reading it, the author also used the term to defame the Jews in relation to allegedly fraudulent financial transactions:

“Lie to stupid Goi . He struggles with the money bag: 'Rebekkaleben, look here!' Then he takes his strap. And mumble with the gills. "

With the end of the National Socialist tyranny , the term went out of fashion for obvious reasons. It has been detectable again since around 1970, but has lost its exclusively anti-Semitic connotation and is now used colloquially as a synonym for cheating or deceiving .

reception

The Protestant theologian and pacifist Albert Schweitzer tells us in his personal accounts from the acquaintance of a Jew, Mausche called to the village children watched mockingly. Schweitzer wrote “From Mausche I learned for the first time what it means to remain silent in persecution. ... For me he has remained the mouse with the forgiving smile that still forces me to be patient today, wherever I want to be angry and frolic. "

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Isabel Enzenbach: Mauscheln. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 3: Concepts, ideologies, theories. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-24074-4 , p. 205 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  2. ^ German dictionary sv Mauscheln on woerterbuchnetz.de , accessed on December 8, 2018.
  3. ^ Peter Eisenberg: The foreign word in German . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-047271-4 ( google.de [accessed December 9, 2018]).
  4. ↑ Johann Andreas Schmeller: Bavarian Dictionary: Collection of words and expressions that occur in the living dialects as well as in the older and oldest provincial literature of the Kingdom of Bavaria, especially in its older lands, and in today's general German written language either not at all, or not common in the same meanings. Oldenbourg, 1872, p. 1680 ( google.de [accessed December 9, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Apostolica (et evangelica) status retio (etc.) That is: Spiritual-apostolic stateist from the heavenly citizen right St. Pauli ... apart from ... the false world stateism opposed in 2 sermons (etc.) . Rebenlein, 1675 ( google.de [accessed December 9, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Mauscheln in the glossary of anti-Semitic terms of the Foundation against Racism and Antisemitism , Zurich 2015, accessed on December 3, 2018
  7. ↑ Verena Buser : Der Mauscheljude (1879) . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Hostility to Jews in the past and present . Volume 6: Publications . On behalf of the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin a. a. 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-025872-1 , p. 448.
  8. ↑ Der Stürmer, 29/1935, quoted from Daniel Roos, Julius Streicher and "Der Stürmer" 1923 - 1945 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3506772671 , p. 273.
  9. ↑ Elvira Bauer: Trust no fox on green heath and no Jew in his oath! A picture book for young and old . Nuremberg 1936, no page numbers)
  10. ↑ Isabel Enzenbach: Mauscheln. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 3: Concepts, ideologies, theories. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-24074-4 , p. 206 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  11. ↑ mauscheln at Duden online , accessed on December 4, 2018
  12. ↑ Albert Schweitzer: Self-testimonials . CH Beck, 1988, ISBN 978-3-406-02537-2 , pp. 16 ( google.de [accessed December 7, 2018]).

See also

Mauscheln (card game)