Philistines

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Narrow -minded people who are characterized by mental immobility, pronounced conformity with social norms and an aversion to changes in the familiar living environment are described in a pejorative way as philistines , philistines or philistines . In Switzerland philistines are also called Bünzli or fuedlibuerger ( Füdli referred = rump).

Concept history

Emergence

The name goes back to the citizens who lived in the city in the Middle Ages and who defended their hometown with the spear as a weapon. Philistines differed from the stake citizens living in the suburbs (Poahlbürgern), but belonged to the poorer citizens within urban society, as they served with the urban foot troops, while wealthier citizens could pay mercenaries for this. The spit as a weapon was relatively inexpensive to manufacture and at the same time it was efficient to use against the noble knight armies of the high and late Middle Ages (see pikemen ). He helped citizens and peasants in the peasant and Hussite wars to high victories in the battles against the noble cavalry . The term "philistine" used to have a positive connotation , as serving in defense of the hometown was seen as an honor.

Apparently the reputation of the "philistine" and his designation declined, "perhaps because only the poorest and most unfit were elected among the philistines, while the richer served better on horseback". "Now it is only used in the contemptuous sense of every minor citizen" (Adelungs Dictionary, 1811). Students who came from the aristocratic or wealthy bourgeoisie for a long time ended up using the term in their student language . " Philistine " became - similar to the expression " Philistine " for a person who is not open to culture - a common term used by the higher-ups against petty-bourgeois and, from their point of view, narrow-minded people. This use is shown e.g. E.g. with Heinrich Heine , who wrote about Göttingen in 1826 , where he had studied a semester a few years earlier and spent one in a relegation :

“In general, the inhabitants of Göttingen are divided into students, professors, Philistines and cattle ... The number of the Göttingen Philistines must be very large, like sand, or better said, like dung by the sea; verily, when I saw them in the morning, with their dirty faces and white bills, planted in front of the gates of the academic court, I could hardly understand how God could only create so many rags. "

Use from the 20th century

At the beginning of the 20th century, the term was expanded to include the short form philistine and the adjective narrow-minded . Lately, the terms have occasionally been applied to left groups themselves, as critics see their position as the new mainstream in the course of the march through the institutions . The taz , which discussed the new bourgeoisie in a series of articles , used the term philistine in a related subscription campaign ("Become a neo-philistine"). In a 2004 commercial for the Landesbausparkasse , a girl said to her father ( Ingo Naujoks ), who was living as a dropout and who describes people with real estate as "philistines": "You dad, when I grow up, I want to become a philistine too."

Literary interpretations

In his novel Der etwige Spießer , published in 1930, the writer Ödön von Horváth characterizes a philistine as a “hypochondriacal egoist who seeks to adapt cowardly everywhere and to falsify every new idea by appropriating it”. The philistine travels around the world and see only himself. What is good and bad he knows without thinking.

The literature of the 19th century seems to know two categories of philistines : Charles Dickens describes the good-natured philistine - meaning people who indulge in superficial sociability and also like to hang out in clubs. Harmless jokes and a kind of familiar hustle and bustle prevail. The vicious variants of philistines appear in Honoré de Balzac's novel Die Kleinbürger , which is characterized by spitefulness, gossip addiction, slander and betrayal , conceit , know-it-all and pomposity. The subject in Heinrich Mann's 1918 novel of the same name is an authoritative opportunist , follower and conformist . Much of it is reminiscent of Adorno's “ authoritarian personality ”.

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: philistines  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Philistines  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl Heisig : Dt. Philistines = philistines. In: Journal for German Philology 83 (1964), pp. 345-350.
  2. ↑ Bünzli - Spiessbürger ( Memento from January 4, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ), entry in the dialect dictionary of the Swiss radio DRS , accessed on January 4, 2014
  3. ↑ Füdli citizens narrow-minded, poor philistines ( memento from April 7, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), entry in the dialect dictionary of the Swiss radio DRS , accessed on January 4, 2014
  4. ↑ http://lexika.digitale-sammlungen.de/adelung/lemma/bsb00009134_2_1_1544
  5. ↑ From: Travel Pictures. First part: Die Harzreise (1826), cited above. according to: DHA, Vol. 6, p. 84.
  6. ↑ Mathias Bröckers: "You papa - when I grow up, I want to be a philistine!" Retrieved June 17, 2020 .