The Big ACL Opening

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:53:59 +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote:

> On Fri, 17.10.08 12:46, Jon Ciesla wrote:
> 
> > An interesting irony here is that while Nietzsche's Ubermensch is best
> > translated as Overman, for English, it's commonly mistranslated as
> > Superman, and so Superpackager "sounds" more like what Lennart was getting
> > at than does Uberpackager.  To me, anyway.
> 
> Uh, no. The problem I see is specifically with the german language
> prefix "Über-" used (as prefix to a word of any other language) as
> some kind of superlative when used in reference to Nietzsche's
> "Übermensch" -- because that term at least Germany has been
> appropriated by the Nazis.
> 
> I fully understand that not everyone is aware of this connection,
> especially outside of Germany. But uh, in Germany it is very obvious.

I think this is Übertreibung.

> Also note that the "über" in the first stanza of the "Deutschlandlied"
> played a role in the decision to make only the third stanza the German
> anthem. (i.e. "Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles.")

The reason is the content of the first stanza, which bears a risk of
misunderstanding it, and its connection to the Third Reich. For anyone
interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandlied#Modern_misconceptions