take from the tribe

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The phrase "take from the tribe " denotes a scrounger or greedy . The expression is considered colloquial and derogatory, but also joking. It is mostly used by the elderly.

Grammar, phraseology, variants

The phrase is a prepositional phrase , take a substantiated imperative . Phraseologically , "take from the tribe" belongs to a group of archaic phrases such as "break a lance for someone" or " hold moles for sale", which the older generation uses "with non-ironic stylistic intent". Widespread is the variant of the tribe Take is occupied by tribal Nimmsi .

origin

Individual publications about the occurrence of the phrase are not verifiable. Information in reference books is imprecise. In general, the phrase is traced back to a passage in the Old Testament .

The fourth book of Moses names the sons of the twelve tribes of Israel who were chosen by Moses to explore the land of Canaan . Among them was Palti "from the tribe of Benjamin" ( Num 13,9  LUT ). The tribe is also mentioned elsewhere in the Old and New Testaments . Apostle Paul writes: "I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin."

The passage in Numbers 13: 9 became the template for the phrase “ Take” . A somewhat more complicated metonymic process with "intentionally wrong reading" resulted in the "wit of the quote". The lexicon of idioms sees "perhaps a mutilation of the name Benjamin". Georg Büchmann's collection of Winged Words cites the quote as a “perhaps joking”, “probably joking” extension. The Duden editorial team sees “possibly a corruption ”. The "joking addition" of another tribe to those known from the Bible was also suspected.

distribution

According to the Germanist Keith Spalding , the first entry was made in a reference work in 1873 in Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wanders Sprich introduction Lexikon . Wander, however, backed up the expression with quotations from collections of East Prussian and Upper Lusatian idioms that had appeared in the 1860s. A distribution in Thuringia is also given. Technical lexicons do not mention an initial reference. For the linguist Heinz Küpper , the phrase "at least since 1830" existed.

The anonymous and undated edition of Reineke Fuchs , attributed to the Westerwald pastor Karl Christian Ludwig Schmidt , which is said to have appeared in 1805, provides early evidence . The work, partly rhymed, attributes the expression to a presumably greedy wolf : (...) “only the Mosje Isegrim rightly belongs to the Nimm tribe.” The terms Mosje and Musje used there are Germanizations of the address Monsieur . In 1814 the word and the opposite word were already established by the Swiss poet Johann Rudolf Wyss : “Is the widow tenacious? Give from the tribe or take from the tribe? "

The evocative of greed French titling "Seigneur de Pret-au-val, de la Branche de Prensd'or" in 1767 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's comedy Minna von Barnhelm published, is called "Lord of the Manor on Borgental the tribe Take", "Lord of Schuldenthal, from the tribe of Nimm "or" [Lord] of Schuldental, from the tribe of gold takers (for example: from the tribe of Nimm) ". The transcriptions and explanations come from the later 19th and 20th centuries.

Meaning and use

Greedy

Widespread from the early evidence to the present day, the verb form from the stem of take be means "rather to take than to give", "always be concerned with your own gain, to be very greedy and only take, never give". Several meanings have been assigned. With “He is from the tribe take”, “the real Berliner” describes a cutthroat; as an adjective “take” it is used in Berlin for a self-seeking, profitable or greedy person. The Low German proverb “Hei ös vom Nömm, sin Vader het Drist”, in High German “He is from the Nimm tribe, his father is bold”, portrays him as an impudent person . “To be thieving” is documented from the 1930s onwards.

The equation “ von Habsburg ” with from the Nimm tribe or the title “Prince Max from the Nimm tribe, from the Haltfest house” by the novelist Edmund Hoefer had a funny effect .

Jew

The satirical writer Theodor Heinrich Friedrich alluded to a connection between Jews and money as early as 1815. The soul of a child protagonist, son of a Jew, "was turned towards Mammon ", and "the elders in Israel praised and prophesied that he would one day excel in understanding and wealth among all so of the tribe." In the second half of the 19th century In the 19th century, the phrase was especially popular in anti-Semitic journalism as a paraphrase for Jews . The Deutsch-Soziale Blätter , the organ of the German Social Party , wrote about “hungry mouths, especially from the tribe take”. A political picture sheet distributed in Dresden in 1892 about the “Börsen-Kirmeß” showed a poison tree in the middle, “embraced by the crowned snake from the Nimm tribe”, as the Leipziger Zeitung described it. City archivist Gotthard von Hansen wrote about the history of Reval : “At that time the people of the Nimm tribe were not there in abundance.” In a calendar story from the 1840s, the Swiss writer Jeremias Gotthelf alluded to the cliché of the excessiveness of rich Jews and used a variant of the word: "Furthermore, the great Rothschild and his hungry children ate milk from a poor farmer, and the Jewish children ate quite a bit, because they were also from the Nimmsi tribe."

Clergyman

In East Prussia, clergymen were described as of the Nimm tribe , "often" according to Wander. The pastors, although civil servants, were financed in Prussia from the church coffers of the parishes in the 18th and 19th centuries. The necessary cash payouts and the levying of pride fees that had to contribute to income could lead to conflict.

Antonymy

Based on the quote “Giving is more blessed than taking” in the Acts of the Apostles , the contrast between giving and receiving is thematized in many idioms: “He considers taking to be more blessed than giving”, “He is not from Gibingen, but from Nehmingen, or Baslerisch He isch fo Named, nit fo Gäbige "," Many are from Nehmersdorf (gladly take), but not from Gebersdorf. "

To “take from the tribe” is given as an antonym “give away the last shirt”. The immediate opposite is "from the tribe give" . The use is consistent from the early mention of Wyss in 1814 to the present day. The publicist Hellmut von Gerlach wrote in 1924 in the Weltbühne about the entrepreneur Rudolph Hertzog : "[Anyone] who knew him knew that his whole nature belonged to the tribe of take rather than of the tribe of give." In 1994, the novelist Bernhard Schlink lets one Protagonists tell: “Helmut is from the Nimm family. And I was from the Gib tribe for years. "

Contemporary use

Even if the use of the phrase is declining overall, it has survived in the texts of contemporary and younger writers. It is not always viewed negatively.

  • Martin Walser , at halftime (1960): “I'm not going to say no, he said, put the glass on the lower lip arching the chin, quickly emptied the contents into the oral cavity, exhaled and said: After all, we are employees of the tribe Take! "
  • Walter Kempowski , in Tadellöser & Wolff (1971): “[You] be taken from the tribe. It could be that they even let something go, they'll get it done. "
  • Max Goldt , in Die Radiotrinkerin (1991): "Where do such people only get the money for bath blood!" "They are from the tribe Take."
  • Günter Grass , in Ein Weites Feld (1995): "There will always be the Treibels and their relatives from the Nimm tribe."
  • Wolf Biermann , in About Germany. Unter Deutschen (2002): "Strong poets, like Shakespeare, like Goethe, like Thomas Mann, like Brecht, are always strong in the best sense of the line TAKE!"
  • Heinz Strunk , in Der Goldene Handschuh (2016): "We didn't bet like that, little finger, whole hand, take from the trunk."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Böttcher: Winged words. 1st edition, Leipzig 1982, No. 605. Quoted from Rudolf Schützeichel: Winged words. Review. In: Contributions to name research. Volume 19, 1984, p. 243
  2. ↑ Duden, related words and expressions. Mannheim 1972, p. 313
  3. ↑ Duden phrases. Dictionary of German Idioms. 2nd edition Mannheim 2002, p. 722. - Duden quotations and sayings. Mannheim 1993, p. 460
  4. ↑ Christine Palm: Phraseology. An introduction. Tübingen 1995, p. 21
  5. ↑ Duden Vol. 4, Grammatik, Mannheim 2006, p. 839
  6. ↑ Christine Palm: Phraseology. An introduction. Tübingen 1995, p. 21 f.
  7. ↑ for example in Julius Wolff's Tannhäuser. A minstrel. Berlin 1888, p. 32
  8. ↑ Jeremias Gotthelf: Complete Works . Volume 23, Erlenbach-Zürich 1931, p. 132. For the meaning of “Jew” see the corresponding section.
  9. ↑ References at bibleserver.com , accessed on February 3, 2012
  10. ↑ Rom 11.1  EU ; so also Phil 3,5  EU
  11. ↑ Kurt Böttcher: Winged words. 2nd edition, Leipzig 1982, No. 605, p. 103. - Ernst Lautenbach: Lexikon Bibel Zitate. Selection for the 20th century. Munich 2006, p. 1044
  12. ↑ Rudolf Schützeichel: Winged words. Review. In: Contributions to name research. Volume 19, 1984, p. 243
  13. ↑ Kurt Böttcher: Winged words. 2nd edition, Leipzig 1982, No. 605, p. 103
  14. ^ Klaus Müller: Lexicon of speeches. Munich 2005, p. 436 sv take
  15. ↑ Georg Büchmann: Winged words. The treasure trove of quotations from the German people. Berlin 1961, p. 16
  16. ↑ Georg Büchmann: Winged words. The treasure trove of quotations from the German people. Berlin 1972, p. 18
  17. ↑ Duden quotes and sayings. Mannheim 1993, p. 460. So also in Duden. The great book of quotes and idioms. 2nd edition, Mannheim 2007, p. 787 sv vom Stamme Take his
  18. ^ A b c d Heinz Küppers: Illustrated lexicon of German colloquial language. Volume 7, Stuttgart 1984, p. 2706 sv Stamm
  19. ↑ Keith Spalding: An Historical Dictionary of German Figurative Usage. Volume 4, Oxford 1984, p. 1776 sv take. - Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander: German dictionary of proverbs. Volume 3, Leipzig 1873, p. 1034 sv Take
  20. ^ Hermann Frischbier: Prussian proverbs and proverbial sayings. 2nd edition, Berlin 1865, as well as Gustav Adolf Klix: Upper Lusatian proverbs and proverbial sayings in the Bautzener Nachrichten , issue 84, 1869
  21. ^ Lessing's works. Edited by Robert Boxberger, Volume 2, Berlin, Stuttgart 1883, p. 337 (= Deutsche National-Litteratur, Volume 59)
  22. ^ [Attributed to Karl Christian Ludwig Schmidt:] Reineke the fox, improved by Johannes Ballhorn, the younger. Trowitzsch, Frankfurt / Oder and Berlin, undated [dated: 1805]. The attributions are taken from the online library catalog of the Munich State Library.
  23. ^ [Attributed to Karl Christian Ludwig Schmidt:] Reineke the fox, improved by Johannes Ballhorn, the younger. Trowitzsch, Frankfurt / Oder and Berlin, undated [dated: 1805], p. 56
  24. ^ [Attributed to Karl Christian Ludwig Schmidt:] Reineke the fox, improved by Johannes Ballhorn, the younger. Trowitzsch, Frankfurt / Oder and Berlin, undated [dated: 1805], p. 23
  25. ↑ cf. Hans H. Hiebel: Lenz and Schiller. The dramatic language that is symptomatic of experience. In: Jeffrey L. High et al. a. (Ed.): Who is this Schiller now? Essays on his reception and significance. Pp. 25–36, here p. 32
  26. ^ A b Johann Rudolf Wyss: The picture of Albrecht Dürer. In: A selection of small novels and poems for friends of an exhilarating reading. Volume 9, Aarau 1814, p. 389. - Anonymous the same also in: The collector. An entertainment sheet. Vienna, Volume 6, Issue 85 of May 28, 1814, p. 337
  27. ↑ literally after the first printing: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Minna von Barnhelm, or the luck of the soldiers. Berlin 1767, p. 120. For the long debate about the reading “val” or “vol”, see also Ulrike Zeuch: Lessing Limits. Wiesbaden 2005, pp. 60f.
  28. ^ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Minna von Barnhelm. Edited by Philip Schuyler Allen, New York 1907, p. 214 (= Merrill's German Texts)
  29. ^ Lessing's works. Edited by Robert Boxberger. Volume 2, Berlin, Stuttgart 1883, p. 337 (= German National Literature, Volume 59)
  30. ^ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Minna von Barnhelm. Edited by Wolfgang Kröger. Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 21
  31. ↑ Duden. The large dictionary of the German language. 3rd edition, Volume 8, Mannheim 1999, p. 3695 sv Stamm
  32. ↑ Lutz Röhrich: The great lexicon of the proverbial sayings. Volume 2, Freiburg 1992, p. 1087 sv
  33. ^ Heinrich Karl Wilhelm Berghaus: The vocabulary of the Sassen. A dictionary of the Plattdeütschen [sic] language in the main dialects. Volume 2, Berlin 1883, p. 782 sv Take
  34. ^ Hermann Frischbier: Prussian dictionary. East and West Prussian provincialisms in alphabetical order. Volume 2, Berlin 1883, sv take
  35. ^ Alfred von Salten, Robert Douffet: Deutsche Wortforschung und Wortkunde. Leipzig 1907, p. 65
  36. ↑ Edmund Hoefer: A foundling. Volume 4, Schwerin 1868, p. 213
  37. ↑ Theodor Heinrich Friedrich: Second satyrical campaign with humorous digressions. Berlin 1815, p. 105
  38. ^ O. Vf .: Hungary at the end of the jubilee year. In: German Social Papers. December 24, 1896, p. 419
  39. ^ G. Oe .: Politischer Bilderbogen No. 5. Börsen-Kirmeß . Dresden 1892
  40. ↑ Leipziger Zeitung , 1892 p. 480
  41. ^ G. Springfeld (= Gotthard von Hansen): My hometown Reval 50 years ago. Dorpat 1877, p. 14
  42. ↑ quoted from Jeremias Gotthelf: Complete Works . Volume 23, Erlenbach-Zurich 1931, p. 132
  43. ^ Hermann Frischbier: Prussian proverbs and proverbial sayings. 2nd edition, Berlin 1865, p. 196, No. 2790 - Moritz Busch: Deutscher Volkshumor , Leipzig 1877, p. 139
  44. ^ Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander: German Sprichwort Lexikon. Volume 3, Leipzig 1873, p. 1034 sv Take
  45. ↑ Anonymous: On the fixing of the income of the clergy. In: Prussische Provinzial-Blätter. Volume 5, Königsberg 1831, pp. 234–267, here p. 238 ff.
  46. ↑ Acts 20:35  EU
  47. ^ S. Hetzel: How the German speaks. Phraseology of Popular Language. Leipzig 1896, p. 225
  48. ^ Karl Albrecht: The Leipzig dialect. Grammar and dictionary of the Leipzig vernacular. Leipzig 1881, p. 176
  49. ↑ Paul Drechsler: Popular place and time designation. In: Communications of the Silesian Society for Folklore. Volume 2, 1897, p. 87
  50. ↑ Christine Palm: Phraseology. An introduction. Tübingen 1995, p. 53
  51. ↑ Hellmut von Gerlach: Memories of a Junker. Part X: Hammerstein and the Conservatives. In: Weltbühne. 1924, pp. 801-805, here p. 802
  52. ^ Bernhard Schlink: Selb's betrayal. Zurich 1994, p. 274
  53. ↑ Martin Walser: Half time. Quoted from the Frankfurt am Main 1973 edition, p. 531
  54. ^ Walter Kempowski: Blameworthy & Wolff. Quoted from the Munich 1999 edition, p. 105
  55. ↑ Max Goldt: The radio drinker. Quoted from the Munich 1993 edition, p. 92
  56. ^ Günter Grass: A broad field. Göttingen 1995, p. 529
  57. ↑ Wolf Biermann: About Germany. Among Germans . Cologne 2002, p. 154
  58. ↑ Heinz Strunk: The Golden Glove . First edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2016, ISBN 978-3-498-06436-5 , pp. 51 .