affair

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The word affair (more rarely affair , from French affaire , "matter") is used in German with different meanings. On the one hand, it describes a public scandal , i.e. reprehensible machinations or failure on a large scale in politics, administration, business or the media, and on the other, a love affair .

Word origin

The word was borrowed in the 17th century from the French affaire , a combination of (avoir) à faire ("to do (have)"). Hence the spelling Affaire , which is rare in German today, comes from . The French saying “pull yourself out of the affair” reflects the French “se tirer d'affaire”. The word meaning was initially only "matter", then affair became a euphemism for "love affair" or sex relationship , especially for those who were perceived as scandalous. Today affair is mainly used to name a scandalous matter in politics and / or business.

Affair can be found - as well as scandal - as word component in many compositions that individual as inappropriate to scandalous affairs judged mark (see, scandals and affairs or plagiarism scandal ).

Some known affairs (in chronological order)

  • The poison affair (1678–1682) was the greatest scandal in France of Louis XIV , in which even members of the court and the king's mistress Madame de Montespan were drawn into. The affair threatened to darken the carefully and consciously cultivated image of the radiant Sun King and his glamorous government.
  • The collar affair (1785–86) about the ingenious and brazen theft of a sinfully expensive diamond necklace ruined the reputation of the French Queen Marie Antoinette , even though she had basically nothing to do with the matter.
  • Dreyfus affair in France at the end of the 19th century: Alfred Dreyfus was sentenced to life in exile and imprisonment for alleged treason. His guilt or innocence has been hotly debated for years.
  • Harden-Eulenburg affair involving prominent members of the cabinet of Kaiser Wilhelm II from 1907 to 1909
  • Starfighter affair (see also Lockheed scandal ) - the circumstances surrounding the procurement of the Lockheed F-104 "Starfighter" fighter aircraft : why did Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss, against the advice of many experts, order an apparently highly immature aircraft?
  • Watergate Affair - a series of serious "abuse of government authority" during the tenure of US President Richard Nixon between 1969 and 1974.
  • Guillaume affair - on April 24, 1974, Günter Guillaume, a close colleague of Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt, was exposed as a GDR agent. Brandt took over political responsibility and resigned from his office as Federal Chancellor on May 7, 1974.
  • Bombing affair
  • Flick Affair - (around 1985) about covert party donations from the Flick Group to maintain the political landscape
  • Waldheim affair (1986) - about the suspected involvement of Kurt Waldheim of war crimes in the period of National Socialism . It began in 1986 during his election campaign for the Office of the Federal President of Austria and continued beyond the end of his term of office in 1992.
  • Barschel affair - 1987 about the then Schleswig-Holstein Prime Minister Uwe Barschel
  • Lewinsky Affair - A Political Affair (1998) in the United States over allegations that President Bill Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky had a sexual relationship.
  • Guttenberg plagiarism affair - Plagiarism was discovered and published in the doctoral thesis of the German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg . This led to the revocation of the doctorate and the resignation of the CSU politician.
  • NSU affair - “The NSU is assigned, among other things, the neo-Nazi series of murders from 2000 to 2006, the nail bomb attack in Cologne in 2004 and the murder of the police in Heilbronn in 2007. ... The actions of security authorities such as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Office for the Military Counter-Intelligence Service and the police led in July 2012 to resignations and dismissals of the President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Presidents of the Thuringian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Saxony and the head of the Department for the Protection of the Constitution of the Berlin Ministry of the Interior. Negligence, destruction of files, the use of V-persons, investigation mishaps and organizational deficits are examined in the 'NSU Committee' of the German Bundestag and in individual federal states. "
  • Wulff affair , led to the resignation of the then German Federal President Christian Wulff in 2012
  • Surveillance and Espionage Affair - Affair surrounding the espionage and surveillance activities of the National Security Agency and other intelligence services in 2013, sparked by the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden .
  • Ibiza affair , led to the break of the government coalition in Austria in 2019.

Web links

Wiktionary: Affair  - Explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ According to Kluge Etymological Dictionary of the German Language. 24th edition, 2002, Lemma Affair
  2. Lemma affair in: Der kleine Duden. Foreign dictionary. 2nd ed. 1983, p. 19. See also: Mackensen German Dictionary. 11th edition. Südwest Verlag, Munich 1986, Lemma Affair, marked there as "ironic, maliciously meant"
  3. ^ According to the dictionary of contemporary German language (WDG), online via The digital dictionary of the German language of the 20th century . Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , accessed on August 8, 2009
  4. a b c d sentence after Kluge Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, 24th edition, 2002, Lemma Affair