“Zeitenwende” is word of the year

“Zeitenwende” is the word of the year 2022. This was announced by the Society for the German Language (GfdS) in Wiesbaden. The noun generally designates the transition to a new era and specifically the beginning of the Christian era now two millennia ago; Chancellor Olaf Scholz popularized it in a new guise in view of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

The SPD politician spoke of a “turning point” several times: in February in a Bundestag speech in which the word appears five times, in August at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, and in September at the United Nations in New York. The federal government published a brochure – albeit only on the Internet – entitled, of course, “Speeches at the turning point”.

word in the first sentence

Only a few days ago, the Hanseatic, who is not considered a rhetorical genius by observers, followed up again. Scholz drew a featured article for Foreign Affairs, the leading foreign affairs and international relations journal focused on US foreign policy. Headline: “The global turning point”. And here, too, the word is in the first sentence.

In the English-language “Wikipedia” edition there has long been a separate article entitled “Zeitenwende speech” (Zeitenwende speech), which mainly refers to Scholz’ appearance in the Bundestag. In it, the Chancellor’s key sentences are quoted: “We are experiencing a turning point. And that means: The world after is no longer the same as the world before. The core question is whether power can break the law, whether we can (the Russian President Vladimir, editor’s note) Allow Putin to turn the clocks back to the great powers of the 19th century, or whether we can muster the strength to set limits on warmongers like Putin. That takes your strength.”

180 degree turn

As a result, journalists around the world analyzed the Berlin speech and spoke of a 180-degree course correction, including the British Guardian. Almost overnight, Germany was “no longer just an economic, but also a geopolitical center of power.” In a coup d’état, the government swept away the iron dogma according to which the Federal Republic would not deliver weapons to conflict zones, and at the same time mobilized enormous sums for an “efficient, highly modern, progressive Bundeswehr”. Scholz announced a special fund of 100 billion euros in parliament. He emphasized the close ties with “our friends and partners in Europe and worldwide”.

Against this background, the most important criterion of the GfdS has undoubtedly been met: As “Word of the Year”, the jury chooses a term that has linguistically determined political, economic and social life in Germany. However, the selected words and phrases are not associated with any rating or recommendation, explain the linguists, who put the word “breakwater” at the top of their list in 2021 – a noun known from coastal protection that was last used for protective measures with which the Waves of the corona pandemic should be broken.

Fear of nuclear war

From the point of view of the Wiesbaden researchers, the “turning point” not only marks a change in political course. “Many people also experienced an emotional turnaround. Fear and concern about a nuclear war in Europe, even about a third world war, could be felt in many cases,” the statement said. When selecting from more than 2000 submissions, the jury quickly agreed, said the chairman of the GfdS, Peter Schlobinski.

But the following places on the list of winners also have the same thematic background: “War for Peace” (second place) and “Gas price brake” (third place). In sixth place is another neologism that we owe to the chancellor’s speechwriters: the “double boom”, with which the traffic light coalition announced not only the gas price brake but also an electricity price brake in order to curb the rapidly rising energy costs. The “nine-euro-ticket”, whose holders could use local public transport nationwide, came in eighth.

The Society for the German Language is a politically independent association for the cultivation and research of the German language based in Wiesbaden. It is funded by the Federal Government and the Conference of Ministers of Education. Founded in 1947, the non-profit association also offers language advice on questions relating to grammar, spelling and punctuation.

keeping the body clean

The words of the year have now been announced for the 46th time. But there has probably never been so much “turning point” as this time: Even the “washcloth tips” (tenth place), which the Baden-Württemberg Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann gave his Swabian fellow citizens on the way to energetically optimized keeping the body clean, are included.

However, many who are at loggerheads with so-called gender-appropriate language (sometimes with a colon, sometimes with an asterisk, sometimes without anything) think that the previous sentence needs to be linguistically cleaned up. “Apparently older people in particular felt a mental change in view of the increasing changes in language use,” writes the GfdS. It remains to be seen, however, whether this “linguistic change” will generally prevail – most recently in the variant of the generic feminine without a pause – “remains to be seen,” said jury member Jochen A. Bär.

In any case, many language purists fear this “new normality” (seventh place, originally the name for changed living conditions caused by the corona pandemic) and not only feel “inflation pain” (fourth place), but also ongoing suffering when reading and listening to their mother tongue, the can be just as violent and just as heatedly articulated as the suffering of the “climate glue” (fifth place) from the failures of political decision-makers in the fight against global warming. Only a short-term remedy – unfortunately without your own team – is offered by the unusual football event in a desert country during the German winter: the “Glühwein World Cup” (ninth place).

jj/sti (dpa, afp, GfdS)