(Link added in 2026 when the old link was dead).
This is the only award or prize given to the German women’s football team when they won the European Championship in 1989. I hope at least they got one each!
This is the rest of the exhibition at the Jüdisches Museum in Fürth:
Henry Kissinger played football as a boy and still follows Greuther Fürth.
A Massachusetts court had a notice of petition for adoption translated into German and posted in a German newspaper. Parts of it are comprehensible.
Anzeige in der taz letzten Donnerstag:
Some links at the end.
Exhibition at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.
Perhaps more interesting for me than for Germans.
I think they put this exhibition together by getting a group of experts to brainstorm.
Many diverse items.
FRG and GDR living rooms
GDR Monopoly set
GDR album cover: Lennon & Plastic Ono Band, Shaved Fish, VEB 1983
Building set: Der kleine Großblockbaumeister
A walking-stick-cum-stringed instrument / Spazierstock-Instrument (Stockvioline)
Der deutsche Schäferhund in Wort und Bild, 1905
Uhu, Tempo, Jenaer Glas
Birkenstock, Tipp-Ex, Nivea
Uta von Naumburg the 19th-c. ideal woman (that was a gap in my education)
German Pavilion, World Fair, Chicago 1893 (a huge edifice)
Decorations, pins, Meisterbrief
Vereine, Fasching
Allotments (Schrebergärten)
Der deutsche Wald, Jagd, sport in the forest; Stifter, Studien 2, Der Hochwald
Waldbesteck: Waidblatt mit Scheide, Messer, Gabel und Feile
Wunderbaum car deodorant
Deutsches Reichs-Einkochglas
Funk-Armbanduhr
Winnetou, Kant, Königin Luise
Wurstmaß, 1601
Kehrwoche sign
Missing
They had Christmas but not Advent
They had freedom movements but not the RAF
Thoughts
They said it might do us good to read Goethe and Schiller today, but this wasn’t substantiated. In what way was it meant?
They talked about the theatre being a moralische Anstalt and TV not being. I’ve often thought about this, because German TV can tend to moralize. For example, every six months the news programme suddenly describes a new film it thinks we should see, even though the rest of the time it has no interest in reviews. I listed part of one exhibit in an earlier entry. But TV doesn’t work like that.
At the end of the catalogue are some materials on a survey done in 9 countries plus Germany. Open questions about the Germans are categorized. Example: Germany most often referred to ‘fleißig und pflichtbewusst’, Czechs most often to ‘diszipliniert’.
Negative factors: the Germans most often said their negative side is that they are pessimistic and complain a lot. No other country mentioned this at all! Lots of Czechs said ‘arrogant’, lots of Austrians just said, ‘Don’t like the Germans’.
What I missed was: why didn’t they ask the Swiss? Would the Swiss have said the Germans are untidy?
Information on the exhibition in German and English.
Die Zeit: Online-Umfrage zum Thema
This topic arose in connection with a mailing-list discussion about schaden- und klaglos halten, which is probably intended to be schad- und klaglos halten and is not necessarily an Austriacism.
The question arose (at least for me) whether you need a separate word for klaglos, or whether indemnify or hold harmless is sufficient alone. So it becomes a question of what the English terms mean – a question often asked by those translating into German when faced with pairs of terms in English.
I looked at Mellinkoff’s Dictionary of American Legal Usage, which is one of a number of books one can consult to see if doublets consist of words with different meanings, or if they could be rendered by one.
To summarize:
hold harmless: is understood to protect another against the risk of loss as well as actual loss. Whether or not it includes defense of lawsuits is sufficiently uncertain to warrant detailed provision.
indemnify: a) sometimes a synonym of hold harmless. The identity is made clearer in the expression indemnify against liability.
b) when distinguished from hold harmless, indemnify: to reimburse for any damage. This sense is spelled out as indemnify against loss
indemnify and hold harmless: a lawyer’s hedge against the imprecision of both expressions, by including assumption of loss and liability. Defense of lawsuits still best spelled out.
On the Web I found indemnify and keep indemnified (but I would think indemnify includes that), and also defend, indemnify and hold harmless. The best mailing-list suggestion was indemnify against loss and lawsuits. The indemnify against seemed wrong to me, but that was because I was thinking indemnify = for past loss and hold harmless = for future liability. The very preposition against seems to me to have a future sense in this context.
I don’t know if indemnify and keep indemnified is necessary. If you promise in a contract to indemnify someone, there’s no reference to ‘once only’.
This is all without asking the necessary question as to the meaning of schad- und klaglos halten.
I had a peculiar exchange of words at the flea market. I was looking at a thick DIY book of the 1960s, entitled Die Axt im Haus. But I didn’t get far because one of the stallholders came up to me and said, ‘This book is much better’, and tried to press a copy of Pschyrembel’s Klinisches Wörterbuch into my hands. This seemed odd, because I already have Pschyrembel (I told him mine was fairly recent and he said, ‘Ein zeitloses Werk’), and I haven’t noticed any do-it-yourself tips in there.
However, it seemed he had read the title as Der Arzt im Haus. I said, ‘Der Arzt im Haus ersetzt sich selber’, and ‘Die Axt im Haus ersetzt den Arzt’, but somehow I don’t think we were on the same wavelength.
This morning:
Last Wednesday:
Working Languages points out that Lufthansa haven’t heard of the term ‘World Cup’.
bq. But what is this World Championship of which they speak? Is it in any way connected to the World Cup currently dominating our lives? Could it perhaps be some parallel or even rival event?
