The totalitarian transformation of Germany by the Nazis also included the deliberate insistence on a new way of speaking that was intended to steer thinking along the desired ideological lines from the outset. Immediately after Hitler was named Chancellor, in March 1933 Reich Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels formulated the following objective: âThe people shall now start to think uniformly, to react uniformly.â
To this end, students in schools were taught not only the Nazi doctrine, but also the correct use of terminology. Moreover, in daily meetings with what was now a largely government-controlled press, Goebbels specified desired expressions â for example, the November 1938 pogroms were to be called âactions against the Jews.â
Will to control language
Culture was likewise affected by this desire to steer language. From todayâs point of view, coinages typical of this realm include âThingâ for a form of Nazi open-air theater play or âGottbegnadeteâ (Those Blessed by God) for a group of outstanding artists who enjoyed special privileges.
âKulturschaffendenâ
Yet there are also Nazi-coined terms that are less easy to identify and are therefore still in use today. One of these is the widely used âKulturschaffende.â
The word, used almost solely in the plural, referred to all persons who were members of the Reich Chamber of Culture from September 1933 onward. It was coined in connection with the establishment of the Chamber by the relevant Reichâs Act promulgated on September 22. Previously, only the adjective âkulturschaffendâ had existed, referring to individuals, institutions, and occasionally peoples, who were contrasted with other, supposedly cultureless peoples. The legislation itself did not at that point include the expression, instead using the term âKulturberufenâ for the âcultural professionsâ. In 1934, however, many artists signed an âAufruf der Kulturschaffenden,â an âAppeal by the Cultural Professionals,â which, in the run-up to the referendum scheduled for August 19, called for the offices of Reich Chancellor and Reich President to be united in the person of Hitler.
Some have objected that in fact the term âKulturschaffenderâ can be found in isolated instances in newspapers before 1933. Yet these are always stances of nouns formed spontaneously from the aforementioned adjective âkulturschaffend,â in which âcultureâ has a different meaning. Here, it is used rather in the sense of âcivilization,â the sense that it also has in expressions such as âearly culturesâ or the German âHochkultur,â meaning âadvanced civilization.â
For this meaning, the âDigital Dictionary of the German Languageâ offers the necessarily somewhat cumbersome definition: âthe totality of the material goods created by humankind in the process of its interaction with the environment and serving its higher development, as well as intellectual, artistic, and moral values.â In this sense, an engineer, a priest, a politician, a tradesperson, or a medical doctor can also be a âcultural creator.â
However, this is not what is meant by the term coined during the Nazi period, which we still use today: It refers to the totality of those working in the arts â that is, artists in the broadest sense (not only visual artists, but also actors, authors, etc.) and those who help make artistic work possible, from publishers and theater directors to stagehands or editors. The word was not used in this sense until 1933-4. It is also identified as a Nazi neologism in âAus dem Wörterbuch des Unmenschenâ, a critical publication on Nazi language that appeared in the postwar period; indeed, sculptor Ernst Barlach still put it in quotation marks in a letter in 1934 Ââ usually an indication that a word is still new and unfamiliar.
Ironically, the word âKulturschaffendeâ as used by the Nazis during the Third Reich survived in the vocabulary of Communist East Germany. The âGroĂes Wörterbuch der deutschen Spracheâ, a dictionary published by Duden, listed âespecially in former East Germanyâ as the area in which the expression was used in 1994. However, the word remained in use in West German political jargon after 1945, too, and is now more present than ever. Two examples of many beyond any suspicion of fascism: The City of Frankfurt explained its Corona assistance measures for artists as follows: âWith the help of the emergency fund, cultural creators (âKulturschaffendeâ in the German) will be assisted during the restrictions caused by the Corona pandemic and the continuation of their artistic activities is to be ensured.â And in April 2022, the broadcaster arte reported on âKulturschaffende and the War.â
Reasons for the post-Nazi career of the word
There are three reasons why the word âKulturschaffendeâ managed to survive the end of the Third Reich. First, it actually filled a designative gap â such an official and factual-sounding word for the totality of all those active in the cultural sector did not exist before. Second, semantically it is not as inextricably linked to Nazi ideology as are expressions such as âUntermenschâ (a âsubhumanâ in Nazi terminology) or âverjudenâ (âto Jewifyâ).
And third, it is very much in line with todayâs need for gender-neutral expression. There is therefore no reason to worry about language cleansing: You donât become a Nazi by using the word âKulturschaffendeâ any more than if you use expressions like âbetreuen,â âentrĂŒmpelnâ, or âEintopf,â or other words not closely linked to fascist ideology that arose after the Nazis took power 1933 in connection with propaganda, war, and measures taken by the regime. It is, however, of course interesting and enlightening to know their origins.
