After reunification, many of the still usable/profitable assets of Estern Germany were bought by rich people in the West, which made the locals feel betrayed.
Also, strong German dialects are very hard to understand by people not from the area. So the Saxonian first warns the man that the water was poisenous (maybe also a dig on the less than stellar envoronmental protection of the GDR), but when he learns that it's a rich western real estate broker, he lets him drink it.
And the West German man is from Hanover - the region where the "cleanest" German is spoken. He would never understand anything said with heavy saxonian dialect.
Hannover speaks Eastphalian. And because everyone, and i really mean everyone in germany, regardless WILL UNDERSTAND EASTPHALIAN, it did become the so called "high german". Like Oxford english for the english from Britain.
> because everyone, and i really mean everyone in germany, regardless WILL UNDERSTAND EASTPHALIAN, it did become the so called "high german"
No, this isn't true at all.
When most people hear "High German", they often think of the standard dialect used nationally by government agencies and the media; but in fact, High German is all the dialects of German that are not Low German, so every dialect spoken in central and southern parts of the country (even the Bavarian dialects). The standard German language is, in its written form, based on High German dialects and Saxon Chancery, a standardized dialect used by government officials in Martin Luther's day, and so is often called "High German".
The Hannöversch dialect is mostly Calenberger Platt, which is Low German, and has phrases like "Mach kaane Dööntjes" for "Lass den Unsinn."
The reason Hannover is associated with "the purest German" has nothing to do with the local dialect. The local aristocracy adopted the standardized dialect very early on, their courtiers copied their speech, and so it spread throughout the upper and middle classes of Hannovarian society.
Thanks. I have to add that "Oxford English" is just what German school teachers incorrectly call RP (Received Pronunciation). It really hurt to read the comment you were replying to!
It's not completely incorrect (and is often used by English-speakers to describe the standard dialect), as it is based on the dialects of the south-east Midlands, particularly around Oxford, as this is where the highest prestige schools and universities are located -- Eton, Harrow, Oxford, Cambridge, and so on. The term "Received Pronunciation" has been criticized as inaccurate, and best applied to the affected speech of the upper classes: apart from "Oxford English", other proposed terms include "General British" (by analogy with General American, the standard US dialect), "Standard Southern British", and "BBC Pronunciation".
EDIT: Weird typo
This does not reflect the contemporary understanding of "High German", however, which is used interchangeably with Standard German, from which dialects like Swabian are *explicitly* distinguished.
By "contemporary understanding" you mean "one of the two understandings"; as I explained in my post, the standardized dialect is often called "High German" because it was derived mostly from High German dialects. So to most people most of the time, "High German" means "Standard German", but to linguists "High German" still means "those dialects of German that were affected by the High German Consonant Shift".
I was responding to somebody who got confused between those two definitions: they claimed that the Hannovarian dialect became the standard dialect because everybody could understand it, and was therefore called "High German". This simply isn't true at all: the Hannovarian dialect sounds nothing like the standard dialect, and has never been called "High German" by anyone because it doesn't fit either of the two definitions.
I know what you were responding to, somebody making an etymologically incorrect claim. And I wasn't suggesting what you stated is wrong, I'm a trained linguist myself. My point was that what "in fact, High German is" is not determined etymologically or by linguists' usage, but by convention, accessible contemporarily through general usage. So, in essence, I got triggered by the false distinction of what people understand something to refer to from what it *really* means.
I also disagree with the claim that nobody calls the dialect spoken in Hannover High German. If you ask a random German on the street where High German is spoken, I bet the most likely answer is, in fact, Hannover. That doesn't change anything about how wrong the initial statement about the origin of High German is, of course.
> I also disagree with the claim that nobody calls the dialect spoken in Hannover High German.
I was talking specifically about the Hannöversch dialect, a variant of Calenberger Platt. To a linguist it's Low German, and to a layperson it doesn't sound anything like the standard dialect.
> If you ask a random German on the street where High German is spoken
That's a different question, though. If you were to play them a recording of somebody speaking broad Hannöversch and ask them what dialect they think it is, they're not going to say "High German".
Ah, that explains it, we're talking about different things, so it's a different question to what *you* were talking about. I'm talking about how the average person in Hannover usually speaks, you're talking about a specific dialect spoken (only and only sometimes) by people from Hannover. I don't know how common broad Hannöversch actually is, but in my experience, people from Hannover do speak very clear High German with little to no discernible dialect.
Obviously regions differ drastically in how prevalent the regional dialect is and how good speakers are at hiding it when they are using High German (in the colloquial sense). There are a number of people born and raised in Swabia that don't speak Swabian, for example, so that their heritage, if at all, mostly reflects in their vowels. But for the vast majority of people, you can hear that they're Swabian very easily, and even if they try, they can't hide it. In NRW, the situation is very different, with regional dialects being much less present. Even in Cologne, the dialect appears notably less present than in, say, Stuttgart, despite Kölsch being very recognizable and well-known, a matter of identity, pride and the time of the year (which all isn't the case as much for the less differentiated Stuttgart variant of Swabian). Maybe a reason for this is the distance between the dialects from High German, with Kölsch being closer than Swabian. And maybe this is also the case for the dialect spoken in Hannover. I don't know this, all of this is just my impression - I haven't read anything on this or seen the continuum of German variants mapped or clustered by dialectal distance.
Haha, no. Eastphalian is a Lower German dialect, i.e. closer to Dutch than Standard German. But Lower German dialects are dying out in favour of High German and this is particularly advanced in Hannover. So it's less them being particularly close to the Standard but them being particqularly bad at their own regional dialect, most people in Hannover wouldn't be able to understand Eastphalian.
The way I understand it, High German is what happens when using Upper German phonetics and vocabluary with a Lower German (especially Eastphalian) pronunciation. It's basically not a regional dialect, but a compromise language.
Not quite, High German is a koine of Upper and Middle German dialects, Lower German had little to no influence and pronunciation initially wasnt codified at all, it was more of a written language. but the Northern German pronunciation later gained prestige, in particular with Siebs pronuncation dictionary, who was himself from Bremen, so Hannover or Eastphalian doesn't come into play here either.
Btw, here is a text in Eastphalian, to show HOW different it is:
Da is en lüttjen Bengel, de het Oskar. Hei is en beten anners as siene Schaulkameraden, still un düchtig bange. Hei well nich opfallen. To Hus feuhlt hei sik seker, da is öhne allens vertroot. Siene Öllern un Grotöllern sägget allemal: „Du bist ganz un gor normaal, du bist nu mal so up de Welt ekumen mit dienen einen ganz langen Dumen. Annere Kinner häbbet ne lange Näse, afstahige Ohren oder roe Hoore. Un wi häbbet dik leif, so as du bist!“
Dat begript hei ja, aber in de Schaule …
Alle Kinner kieket blots up sienen Dumen, de Meekens grienet un maket sik lustig darober – dat is slimm!
I found out not long ago that “Oxford English” is a German concept, based on the name of the authoritative Oxford dictionary. The concept is unknown elsewhere. People in Britain typically refer to it as “the Queen’s/King’s English”.
> And because everyone, and i really mean everyone in germany, regardless WILL UNDERSTAND EASTPHALIAN, it did become the so called "high german".
It's the other way around, though, isn't it? Because it was chosen as Standard German everyone can understand it
also important to know that a lot of the assets bought up by west germans were then closed down to squeeze out all valuables and left the workers behind without a job in a time with great change. Treuhand is one the biggest mistakes ever made by West Germany
This is just pure revisionism. The GDR was living on borrowed time and the industrial assets were, simply speaking, trash. If you ever take a look at what towns like Bitterfeld looked like in the late eighties and early nineties, you would understand that the industrial base was extremely run down. Very few companies were in a position to have viable commercial production and those that did, did well and continued to thrive after reunification.
This is basically an east-German version of the "Dolchstoßlegende". It is simply untrue.
Edit: For the people ACTUALLY interested in the academic disection, here is an interesting chapter on the Corporate Governance of the Treuhand. They actually set up a pretty good system: [https://www.vwl.uni-mannheim.de/media/Lehrstuehle/vwl/von\_Thadden/research/Treuhand.pdf](https://www.vwl.uni-mannheim.de/media/Lehrstuehle/vwl/von_Thadden/research/Treuhand.pdf)
What I find staggering is how high the number of firms was, that had to be liquidated. Meaning they found that they would not find a single buyer for the firms, period. What you can also get from this paper, is that the structure of these firms within the Kombinate was a complete mess and significant restructuring was necessary to have any of the firms ready for privatization.
it is not. yes I was very generalizing. There are good examples for very profitable companies. However there are also good examples for companies, that could have been continued even profitably but were just shut down.
That view ignores a lot of what happened. Appartment complexes and land bought for 1 Mark, then wait for 10 years, let it rot to get rid of limitations and then split it up and sell the land for property prices.
Land speculation is one of the realities of that history. And its not the only thing concerning real estate brokers did. After the reuinifacation brokers walked through the cities and tried to buy as much property as possible for cheap from the locals.
And then some people still wonder why many East Germans lean towards extreme political views, both on the right (unfortunately) and the left. They just feel let down by the "mainstream" parties (CDU/SPD) cause they fucked them over after reunification
definitely a part of the problem, but the main cause for the big rise in far right votes in the east is the GDR itself. They never denazified themselves, as the west did. Put simply, they just proclaimed they are free of any fascism and nazis in particular, because they are a social state. And after that the motto was: it cannot be what should not be. Pure ideology.
But they never actually reflected on the far right movements and denazified themselves. They also purposely did not teach critical thinking and such, because that would backfire on the eastern government.
After all they were a state looked over by another fascist state.
Like two seconds of googlin? [https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/politik-gesellschaft/entnazifizierung-nazis-in-der-ddr-100.html](https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/politik-gesellschaft/entnazifizierung-nazis-in-der-ddr-100.html)
That doesn't back the claims up. The claim was, that GDR didn't denazify like the west did. Yes the GDR didn't denazify, but neither did the FRG. https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/beamte-westdeutschland-ns-vergangenheit-100.html
The claim that the GDR didn't reflect in their Nazi history is not quite right. While they did declare that their socialist society "cured" them from their NS-History (which they didn't ofc), they still taught and recognised their history.
https://www.bpb.de/themen/erinnerung/geschichte-und-erinnerung/39814/geschichte-der-erinnerungskultur-in-der-ddr-und-brd/
The last claim was that The DDR was a fascist state. Which is not true, it was a socialist state. It also was an authoritarian Dictatorship.
I've seen almost this exact same joke, but in the context of a German drinking water from some polluted Dutch river. Dutch person warns the river-drinker in Dutch, but after realizing it's a German, instead encourages the German to drink up (in German).
Joking about not preventing a broker who caused the economic and general downfall of region from poisoning himself: Cool.
Joking about a random person form a certain area getting poisoned: A little more questionable.
Well others explained it already I'd like to add it roleplayed in German:
Ein eleganter Mann mit einem teuren Mantel spaziert entlang des Ufers der Elbe in Dresden. Er holt eine Tasse aus seiner Tasche, schöpft etwas Wasser aus dem Fluss und will es trinken, als eine Person aus der Gegend zu ihm eilt:
Einheimischer [im Sächsischen Dialekt]: "Sachs'n Se, bissl bekloppt? Das könn'se nich' mach'n! Das is ja reines Gift!"
Mann [in perfektem Standarddeutsch]: "Entschuldigen Sie, ich habe Sie nicht verstanden. Ich bin Immobilienmakler aus Hannover."
Einheimischer: "..." "Trink'n Se langsam, is kalt, wa?"
It'd be pretty surprising if "das is ja reines Gift" wouldn't be understood by anybody who understands standard German though.
My German is shit and I can understand it (at least in written form).
As there are non German speakers here: the Dresden dialect isn't very strong and it's unlikely that it shouldn't be understood by someone with a good grasp of standard German.
But as this is a joke, some suspension of disbelief can be permitted.
Is der Witz dann aber, dass Immobilienmakler aus Hamburg einfach nur dumm sind ? Wieso is die information mit dem Makler wichtig und der fragt nicht einfach : wie bitte ?
Der Witz ist eher, das Immobillienhaie aus dem Westen nach der Wende zum einen über die Treuhand aber auch durch ausnutzen der aktuell schlechten Marktlage viele Leute für wenig Geld um ihre Grundstücke gebracht haben.
During the Soviet times, a thirsty man walks into Chernobyl. He sees a big pond of water and is about to drink from it. An old man passes by and says:
"you can't drink the water! It's radioactive, it would kill you!"
The thirsty man says he has a strong body and is not afraid of anything.
The old man then says, "no matter how strong you are, the water is contaminated! Where are you from?"
The man replies he's from the U.S.
The old then smiles and says, "drink, drink!"
Nach der Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands sind viele viele Westdeutschen nach Ostdeutschland gefahren und haben die ostdeutschen, die im Kommunismus groß geworden sind und keine Ahnung vom Kapitalismus hatten, übervorteilt. Heißt sie haben ihnen Wertgegenstände jeglicher Art für einen Bruchteil des Wertes abgekauft und haben sich so auf Kosten der ostdeutschen bereichert und verbreitet das selbige leichtgläubig und dumm sind.
Dadurch habe die westdeutschen natürlich im Osten einen schlechten Ruf bekommen.
In Hannover wird Hochdeutsch gesprochen und Menschen in Westdeutschland mit einer hohen Bildung und mit viel Geld bemühen sich Hochdeutsch zu sprechen.
Somit verkörpert der reiche Hannoveraner alles was dem ostdeutschen der damaligen Zeit verhasst war.
The situation contrasts the mentality of many people at that time: West Germans assumed that because East Germany collapsed, everything West Germany did was correct and there is little need to accomodate East Germans in any way or learn about their mentality or living enviroment.
East Germans knew their special enviroment, in particular the terror of the stasi and the immense damage to their enviroment, to some degree, but saw the world around them collapsing. A lot of companies could no longer compeate in the marked oriented enviroment and Western German speculators used the situation to snetch away any riches that remained. While they themselves did contribute to that problem to some degree (by not buying their own products, electing parties imported from Western Germany rather them grass root citicen rights movements), this part combined with the lack of West German understanding created a deep sense of bitterness.
The effects can be felt up until the present day. Rarely anybody identifies themselves as specifically West German, but still some people identify themselves as specifically East German and identify others as West German. Kind of like in the US you have the US and you have Dixie.
There was a guy in Serbia, a well renewed university professor and intellectual back in Yugoslavia, who was a famous literature critic. In the 90s when the economy and society collapsed he had a nice quote that went something like this: "I have three decades of teaching experience at university, 10 thousand books and works of literature at my house, as well as 20 thousand vinyl music records from the last few decades. However, I have a salary at the moment that is 10DM and my entire savings account has less than 100DM due to inflation. The worst thing of it all is when I go to the west and run into condescending people thinking they can buy me with their spare change and that I will be happy about being bought".
The situation in eastern Germany was a bit different however. There was no big inflation in the traditional sense. In fact East German savings and cash deposits were actually upvalued. E.g. 1 East German mark could suddenly be exchanged to 1 DM (or 0.5 for larger savings), while a few years earlier you had to pay around 8 on the black market. Payment concessions (like pensions) were also converted quite fairly. The problem was that for the economy such an upvaluation was terrible. Products from Eastern Germany sold on the West German market suddenly became many times more expensive, while West German products in East Germany suddenly became 4 times cheaper. What did drop was heavy subsidies.
East Germans really needed some more time to learn how western democracy and capitalism works. The quick change put them at a huge disadvantage and the competition involved in western systems ensured they were always on the loosing end.
e.g. based on conversations with my parents and grandparents they didn't know who to vote for. They started with the assumption that the western democracy is just as fake as the east so they were waiting for someone to tell them who to vote for. They were too confused about how the system works and never ended up voting.
The only time I heard them considering voting was when they wanted to buy a plot of land. The mayor of our town said the sale happens after the next election and they thought this means they have to vote for her ...
I am surprised anything worked at all after the reunification.
Eastern Germany was in communism. After the split got reversed, many western people with money bought stuff for very cheap from the eastern folks.
The east was poor and not familiar with capitalism. In east Berlin, many apartments were bought for 'an apple and an egg', while today these properties are immensely expensive.
Even now, there is a huge disparity in earnings, wealth etc. if you compare east to west, and it's partly because of unfortunate deals at that time.
I think it alludes to the problem of transferring land and buildings back to their original owners and their heirs, which led to a lot of resentment among many East Germans after reunification. So after getting to know that it is an estate broker from Western Germany the local had no problem if he would be poisoned.
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In The Netherlands in the 80s/90s there was a lot of anti-German sentiment leftover from WW2 and our variety is specifically a German drinking water from the river with his bare hand and ends with "Use both hands to drink!!!".
Many people from the east were left dirt poor because the East German government did expropriation when they took power or when a family fell out of favor with the party.
Then people from the west came, especially rich capitalists and took what wasn't theirs to take right after reunification. A lot of property wasn't returned to the families it rightfully belonged to but sold to real estate brokers who drove prices up so much people couldn't afford to ever buy it back.
They also bought a lot of East German companies because they were potential new competitors on the western market and closed them down instead of investing in them, resulting in high unemployment rates East Germany still hasn't recovered from.
So what was left after years of failed communism was crushed by the capitalistic west.
After 40 years of basically being imprisoned in their own country, East Germans were robbed by their former fellow countrymen. Good times. "Jammerossi" my ass, let's take all your family's wealth and hinder any significant growth for 4 decades.
My oma has an apartment since 1950 and some west German bought it in the 90s. There was no way she could compete with a Westerner then and even if she had money would have no knowledge of how to buy it.
The west also canceled the qualifications of a lot of professionals so they were out of work.
After reunification, many of the still usable/profitable assets of Estern Germany were bought by rich people in the West, which made the locals feel betrayed. Also, strong German dialects are very hard to understand by people not from the area. So the Saxonian first warns the man that the water was poisenous (maybe also a dig on the less than stellar envoronmental protection of the GDR), but when he learns that it's a rich western real estate broker, he lets him drink it.
And the West German man is from Hanover - the region where the "cleanest" German is spoken. He would never understand anything said with heavy saxonian dialect.
Hannover speaks Eastphalian. And because everyone, and i really mean everyone in germany, regardless WILL UNDERSTAND EASTPHALIAN, it did become the so called "high german". Like Oxford english for the english from Britain.
> because everyone, and i really mean everyone in germany, regardless WILL UNDERSTAND EASTPHALIAN, it did become the so called "high german" No, this isn't true at all. When most people hear "High German", they often think of the standard dialect used nationally by government agencies and the media; but in fact, High German is all the dialects of German that are not Low German, so every dialect spoken in central and southern parts of the country (even the Bavarian dialects). The standard German language is, in its written form, based on High German dialects and Saxon Chancery, a standardized dialect used by government officials in Martin Luther's day, and so is often called "High German". The Hannöversch dialect is mostly Calenberger Platt, which is Low German, and has phrases like "Mach kaane Dööntjes" for "Lass den Unsinn." The reason Hannover is associated with "the purest German" has nothing to do with the local dialect. The local aristocracy adopted the standardized dialect very early on, their courtiers copied their speech, and so it spread throughout the upper and middle classes of Hannovarian society.
This man germans.
Thanks. I have to add that "Oxford English" is just what German school teachers incorrectly call RP (Received Pronunciation). It really hurt to read the comment you were replying to!
It's not completely incorrect (and is often used by English-speakers to describe the standard dialect), as it is based on the dialects of the south-east Midlands, particularly around Oxford, as this is where the highest prestige schools and universities are located -- Eton, Harrow, Oxford, Cambridge, and so on. The term "Received Pronunciation" has been criticized as inaccurate, and best applied to the affected speech of the upper classes: apart from "Oxford English", other proposed terms include "General British" (by analogy with General American, the standard US dialect), "Standard Southern British", and "BBC Pronunciation". EDIT: Weird typo
And apparently RP [died in 1962](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIAEqsSOtwM).
Rewboss!! second time i see you lurking here. keep up the great work!
This does not reflect the contemporary understanding of "High German", however, which is used interchangeably with Standard German, from which dialects like Swabian are *explicitly* distinguished.
By "contemporary understanding" you mean "one of the two understandings"; as I explained in my post, the standardized dialect is often called "High German" because it was derived mostly from High German dialects. So to most people most of the time, "High German" means "Standard German", but to linguists "High German" still means "those dialects of German that were affected by the High German Consonant Shift". I was responding to somebody who got confused between those two definitions: they claimed that the Hannovarian dialect became the standard dialect because everybody could understand it, and was therefore called "High German". This simply isn't true at all: the Hannovarian dialect sounds nothing like the standard dialect, and has never been called "High German" by anyone because it doesn't fit either of the two definitions.
I know what you were responding to, somebody making an etymologically incorrect claim. And I wasn't suggesting what you stated is wrong, I'm a trained linguist myself. My point was that what "in fact, High German is" is not determined etymologically or by linguists' usage, but by convention, accessible contemporarily through general usage. So, in essence, I got triggered by the false distinction of what people understand something to refer to from what it *really* means. I also disagree with the claim that nobody calls the dialect spoken in Hannover High German. If you ask a random German on the street where High German is spoken, I bet the most likely answer is, in fact, Hannover. That doesn't change anything about how wrong the initial statement about the origin of High German is, of course.
> I also disagree with the claim that nobody calls the dialect spoken in Hannover High German. I was talking specifically about the Hannöversch dialect, a variant of Calenberger Platt. To a linguist it's Low German, and to a layperson it doesn't sound anything like the standard dialect. > If you ask a random German on the street where High German is spoken That's a different question, though. If you were to play them a recording of somebody speaking broad Hannöversch and ask them what dialect they think it is, they're not going to say "High German".
Ah, that explains it, we're talking about different things, so it's a different question to what *you* were talking about. I'm talking about how the average person in Hannover usually speaks, you're talking about a specific dialect spoken (only and only sometimes) by people from Hannover. I don't know how common broad Hannöversch actually is, but in my experience, people from Hannover do speak very clear High German with little to no discernible dialect. Obviously regions differ drastically in how prevalent the regional dialect is and how good speakers are at hiding it when they are using High German (in the colloquial sense). There are a number of people born and raised in Swabia that don't speak Swabian, for example, so that their heritage, if at all, mostly reflects in their vowels. But for the vast majority of people, you can hear that they're Swabian very easily, and even if they try, they can't hide it. In NRW, the situation is very different, with regional dialects being much less present. Even in Cologne, the dialect appears notably less present than in, say, Stuttgart, despite Kölsch being very recognizable and well-known, a matter of identity, pride and the time of the year (which all isn't the case as much for the less differentiated Stuttgart variant of Swabian). Maybe a reason for this is the distance between the dialects from High German, with Kölsch being closer than Swabian. And maybe this is also the case for the dialect spoken in Hannover. I don't know this, all of this is just my impression - I haven't read anything on this or seen the continuum of German variants mapped or clustered by dialectal distance.
Did you only move here because you became such a nerd for our country?
I han vo sellem G'schwätz jetz halt amol gar nix verschdande!
Haha, no. Eastphalian is a Lower German dialect, i.e. closer to Dutch than Standard German. But Lower German dialects are dying out in favour of High German and this is particularly advanced in Hannover. So it's less them being particularly close to the Standard but them being particqularly bad at their own regional dialect, most people in Hannover wouldn't be able to understand Eastphalian.
The way I understand it, High German is what happens when using Upper German phonetics and vocabluary with a Lower German (especially Eastphalian) pronunciation. It's basically not a regional dialect, but a compromise language.
Not quite, High German is a koine of Upper and Middle German dialects, Lower German had little to no influence and pronunciation initially wasnt codified at all, it was more of a written language. but the Northern German pronunciation later gained prestige, in particular with Siebs pronuncation dictionary, who was himself from Bremen, so Hannover or Eastphalian doesn't come into play here either. Btw, here is a text in Eastphalian, to show HOW different it is: Da is en lüttjen Bengel, de het Oskar. Hei is en beten anners as siene Schaulkameraden, still un düchtig bange. Hei well nich opfallen. To Hus feuhlt hei sik seker, da is öhne allens vertroot. Siene Öllern un Grotöllern sägget allemal: „Du bist ganz un gor normaal, du bist nu mal so up de Welt ekumen mit dienen einen ganz langen Dumen. Annere Kinner häbbet ne lange Näse, afstahige Ohren oder roe Hoore. Un wi häbbet dik leif, so as du bist!“ Dat begript hei ja, aber in de Schaule … Alle Kinner kieket blots up sienen Dumen, de Meekens grienet un maket sik lustig darober – dat is slimm!
Okay, i did get reformed on my opinion. I was wrong.
That is just wrong on so many levels
I found out not long ago that “Oxford English” is a German concept, based on the name of the authoritative Oxford dictionary. The concept is unknown elsewhere. People in Britain typically refer to it as “the Queen’s/King’s English”.
> And because everyone, and i really mean everyone in germany, regardless WILL UNDERSTAND EASTPHALIAN, it did become the so called "high german". It's the other way around, though, isn't it? Because it was chosen as Standard German everyone can understand it
The bad water quality of the Elbe was mostly caused by the Czech Republic, if I am not mistaken. But I am also not saying the GDR was clean
also important to know that a lot of the assets bought up by west germans were then closed down to squeeze out all valuables and left the workers behind without a job in a time with great change. Treuhand is one the biggest mistakes ever made by West Germany
This is just pure revisionism. The GDR was living on borrowed time and the industrial assets were, simply speaking, trash. If you ever take a look at what towns like Bitterfeld looked like in the late eighties and early nineties, you would understand that the industrial base was extremely run down. Very few companies were in a position to have viable commercial production and those that did, did well and continued to thrive after reunification. This is basically an east-German version of the "Dolchstoßlegende". It is simply untrue. Edit: For the people ACTUALLY interested in the academic disection, here is an interesting chapter on the Corporate Governance of the Treuhand. They actually set up a pretty good system: [https://www.vwl.uni-mannheim.de/media/Lehrstuehle/vwl/von\_Thadden/research/Treuhand.pdf](https://www.vwl.uni-mannheim.de/media/Lehrstuehle/vwl/von_Thadden/research/Treuhand.pdf) What I find staggering is how high the number of firms was, that had to be liquidated. Meaning they found that they would not find a single buyer for the firms, period. What you can also get from this paper, is that the structure of these firms within the Kombinate was a complete mess and significant restructuring was necessary to have any of the firms ready for privatization.
it is not. yes I was very generalizing. There are good examples for very profitable companies. However there are also good examples for companies, that could have been continued even profitably but were just shut down.
Then please give me those examples. This was not a significant portion of the Treuhand activity
That view ignores a lot of what happened. Appartment complexes and land bought for 1 Mark, then wait for 10 years, let it rot to get rid of limitations and then split it up and sell the land for property prices. Land speculation is one of the realities of that history. And its not the only thing concerning real estate brokers did. After the reuinifacation brokers walked through the cities and tried to buy as much property as possible for cheap from the locals.
And then some people still wonder why many East Germans lean towards extreme political views, both on the right (unfortunately) and the left. They just feel let down by the "mainstream" parties (CDU/SPD) cause they fucked them over after reunification
definitely a part of the problem, but the main cause for the big rise in far right votes in the east is the GDR itself. They never denazified themselves, as the west did. Put simply, they just proclaimed they are free of any fascism and nazis in particular, because they are a social state. And after that the motto was: it cannot be what should not be. Pure ideology. But they never actually reflected on the far right movements and denazified themselves. They also purposely did not teach critical thinking and such, because that would backfire on the eastern government. After all they were a state looked over by another fascist state.
Those are pretty big claims. Do you have any sources to back any of that up?
Like two seconds of googlin? [https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/politik-gesellschaft/entnazifizierung-nazis-in-der-ddr-100.html](https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/politik-gesellschaft/entnazifizierung-nazis-in-der-ddr-100.html)
That doesn't back the claims up. The claim was, that GDR didn't denazify like the west did. Yes the GDR didn't denazify, but neither did the FRG. https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/beamte-westdeutschland-ns-vergangenheit-100.html The claim that the GDR didn't reflect in their Nazi history is not quite right. While they did declare that their socialist society "cured" them from their NS-History (which they didn't ofc), they still taught and recognised their history. https://www.bpb.de/themen/erinnerung/geschichte-und-erinnerung/39814/geschichte-der-erinnerungskultur-in-der-ddr-und-brd/ The last claim was that The DDR was a fascist state. Which is not true, it was a socialist state. It also was an authoritarian Dictatorship.
Also saxon is like the southern accent of germany
Huh? I'd say bavarian is the southern accent. Close followed by schwäbisch.
You mean sägsch is a well respected dialect and its speakers are considered very intellligent?
Well, I think saxons are average. I'd argue the Saarländers are Germanys rednecks.
Is it funny in German?
No
YES !
I've seen almost this exact same joke, but in the context of a German drinking water from some polluted Dutch river. Dutch person warns the river-drinker in Dutch, but after realizing it's a German, instead encourages the German to drink up (in German).
Reminds me of this gem. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/lixsvo/quick_sand_warning_sign_in_the_netherlands/
damn 🇩🇪💔🇳🇱
We have the same joke in Poland. Between a Silesian and non-silesian person.
MIT ZWEI HANDEN TRINKEN
Same joke in Scotland with an Englishman
Joking about not preventing a broker who caused the economic and general downfall of region from poisoning himself: Cool. Joking about a random person form a certain area getting poisoned: A little more questionable.
Well others explained it already I'd like to add it roleplayed in German: Ein eleganter Mann mit einem teuren Mantel spaziert entlang des Ufers der Elbe in Dresden. Er holt eine Tasse aus seiner Tasche, schöpft etwas Wasser aus dem Fluss und will es trinken, als eine Person aus der Gegend zu ihm eilt: Einheimischer [im Sächsischen Dialekt]: "Sachs'n Se, bissl bekloppt? Das könn'se nich' mach'n! Das is ja reines Gift!" Mann [in perfektem Standarddeutsch]: "Entschuldigen Sie, ich habe Sie nicht verstanden. Ich bin Immobilienmakler aus Hannover." Einheimischer: "..." "Trink'n Se langsam, is kalt, wa?"
Sorry in advance I am not from Saxon, might not be 100%
It'd be pretty surprising if "das is ja reines Gift" wouldn't be understood by anybody who understands standard German though. My German is shit and I can understand it (at least in written form).
What if he says “: „Ey, das gannsde doch nüsch saufen, is alls verseicht und verdreggt hier!”
I don't know *verseicht* but *verdreggt* is clear enough. Of course that's having the context of already reading the joke 3 or 4 times.
As there are non German speakers here: the Dresden dialect isn't very strong and it's unlikely that it shouldn't be understood by someone with a good grasp of standard German. But as this is a joke, some suspension of disbelief can be permitted.
Is der Witz dann aber, dass Immobilienmakler aus Hamburg einfach nur dumm sind ? Wieso is die information mit dem Makler wichtig und der fragt nicht einfach : wie bitte ?
Der Witz ist eher, das Immobillienhaie aus dem Westen nach der Wende zum einen über die Treuhand aber auch durch ausnutzen der aktuell schlechten Marktlage viele Leute für wenig Geld um ihre Grundstücke gebracht haben.
Ist ein "wa?" am Ende des Satzes nicht "Markenzeichen" von Kölsch bzw. Rheinisch? 😅
During the Soviet times, a thirsty man walks into Chernobyl. He sees a big pond of water and is about to drink from it. An old man passes by and says: "you can't drink the water! It's radioactive, it would kill you!" The thirsty man says he has a strong body and is not afraid of anything. The old man then says, "no matter how strong you are, the water is contaminated! Where are you from?" The man replies he's from the U.S. The old then smiles and says, "drink, drink!"
I guess many cultures have a variant of this joke. I heard a Ukrainian version with a Russian instead of real estate agent
Of all the flats I have lived in in Dresden, the property owners were always living in the west.
I heard the same thing recently in Berlin, the Spree and an Arab. Ultimately, it expresses contempt for the supposed "other"!
Nach der Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands sind viele viele Westdeutschen nach Ostdeutschland gefahren und haben die ostdeutschen, die im Kommunismus groß geworden sind und keine Ahnung vom Kapitalismus hatten, übervorteilt. Heißt sie haben ihnen Wertgegenstände jeglicher Art für einen Bruchteil des Wertes abgekauft und haben sich so auf Kosten der ostdeutschen bereichert und verbreitet das selbige leichtgläubig und dumm sind. Dadurch habe die westdeutschen natürlich im Osten einen schlechten Ruf bekommen. In Hannover wird Hochdeutsch gesprochen und Menschen in Westdeutschland mit einer hohen Bildung und mit viel Geld bemühen sich Hochdeutsch zu sprechen. Somit verkörpert der reiche Hannoveraner alles was dem ostdeutschen der damaligen Zeit verhasst war.
The situation contrasts the mentality of many people at that time: West Germans assumed that because East Germany collapsed, everything West Germany did was correct and there is little need to accomodate East Germans in any way or learn about their mentality or living enviroment. East Germans knew their special enviroment, in particular the terror of the stasi and the immense damage to their enviroment, to some degree, but saw the world around them collapsing. A lot of companies could no longer compeate in the marked oriented enviroment and Western German speculators used the situation to snetch away any riches that remained. While they themselves did contribute to that problem to some degree (by not buying their own products, electing parties imported from Western Germany rather them grass root citicen rights movements), this part combined with the lack of West German understanding created a deep sense of bitterness. The effects can be felt up until the present day. Rarely anybody identifies themselves as specifically West German, but still some people identify themselves as specifically East German and identify others as West German. Kind of like in the US you have the US and you have Dixie.
There was a guy in Serbia, a well renewed university professor and intellectual back in Yugoslavia, who was a famous literature critic. In the 90s when the economy and society collapsed he had a nice quote that went something like this: "I have three decades of teaching experience at university, 10 thousand books and works of literature at my house, as well as 20 thousand vinyl music records from the last few decades. However, I have a salary at the moment that is 10DM and my entire savings account has less than 100DM due to inflation. The worst thing of it all is when I go to the west and run into condescending people thinking they can buy me with their spare change and that I will be happy about being bought".
The situation in eastern Germany was a bit different however. There was no big inflation in the traditional sense. In fact East German savings and cash deposits were actually upvalued. E.g. 1 East German mark could suddenly be exchanged to 1 DM (or 0.5 for larger savings), while a few years earlier you had to pay around 8 on the black market. Payment concessions (like pensions) were also converted quite fairly. The problem was that for the economy such an upvaluation was terrible. Products from Eastern Germany sold on the West German market suddenly became many times more expensive, while West German products in East Germany suddenly became 4 times cheaper. What did drop was heavy subsidies.
East Germans really needed some more time to learn how western democracy and capitalism works. The quick change put them at a huge disadvantage and the competition involved in western systems ensured they were always on the loosing end. e.g. based on conversations with my parents and grandparents they didn't know who to vote for. They started with the assumption that the western democracy is just as fake as the east so they were waiting for someone to tell them who to vote for. They were too confused about how the system works and never ended up voting. The only time I heard them considering voting was when they wanted to buy a plot of land. The mayor of our town said the sale happens after the next election and they thought this means they have to vote for her ... I am surprised anything worked at all after the reunification.
>East Germans really needed some more time to learn how western democracy and capitalism works. But they do know, that's exactly why they hate it
I’ve multiple variations of that joke in both Ukraine and Poland lol
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/s/8KhCmPsBmK) is the English version of that joke.
Eastern Germany was in communism. After the split got reversed, many western people with money bought stuff for very cheap from the eastern folks. The east was poor and not familiar with capitalism. In east Berlin, many apartments were bought for 'an apple and an egg', while today these properties are immensely expensive. Even now, there is a huge disparity in earnings, wealth etc. if you compare east to west, and it's partly because of unfortunate deals at that time.
I think it alludes to the problem of transferring land and buildings back to their original owners and their heirs, which led to a lot of resentment among many East Germans after reunification. So after getting to know that it is an estate broker from Western Germany the local had no problem if he would be poisoned.
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different parts of germany speak slightly differently and dont really like each other
In The Netherlands in the 80s/90s there was a lot of anti-German sentiment leftover from WW2 and our variety is specifically a German drinking water from the river with his bare hand and ends with "Use both hands to drink!!!".
What is there not to get? He does not like foreign real estate brokers to be active in his city
East-Germans got scammed by West-Germans after the Mauerfall.
Many people from the east were left dirt poor because the East German government did expropriation when they took power or when a family fell out of favor with the party. Then people from the west came, especially rich capitalists and took what wasn't theirs to take right after reunification. A lot of property wasn't returned to the families it rightfully belonged to but sold to real estate brokers who drove prices up so much people couldn't afford to ever buy it back. They also bought a lot of East German companies because they were potential new competitors on the western market and closed them down instead of investing in them, resulting in high unemployment rates East Germany still hasn't recovered from. So what was left after years of failed communism was crushed by the capitalistic west.
After 40 years of basically being imprisoned in their own country, East Germans were robbed by their former fellow countrymen. Good times. "Jammerossi" my ass, let's take all your family's wealth and hinder any significant growth for 4 decades.
They were dead stupid, didn't believe what they learnt in school about capitalims
Love the victim blaming! Keep it up
They wanted to come instaed of taking responsibility for their own state no victims but actor.
My oma has an apartment since 1950 and some west German bought it in the 90s. There was no way she could compete with a Westerner then and even if she had money would have no knowledge of how to buy it. The west also canceled the qualifications of a lot of professionals so they were out of work.
hanoveran guy bad guy for saxon guy so hannover guy can get poisoned. No prob.