Talk:Reich

Connotation of the Word

“A number of words used by the Nazis which earlier were neutral have later taken on a negative connotation; the word "Reich" is one of them.”

The word “Reich” (unlike the word “Führer” or “Heil”) has little negative connotation in german. It just means empire. (Possibly there is some resentment with the concept rather than the word.) You would not use "Reich" in context of germany, because it's the wrong word and using it expresses some disputable nostalgia. There is no negative connotation with the names of other countries, e.g. Frankreich, Österreich.

(By the way, why do you say “Third Reich” instead of “Third German Empire”? Does the word “empire” have a positive connotation?)

-- de:Benutzer:Hokanomono 00:00, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion Reich is not negative in German. I.e. you say "Himmelreich" (something like God's world in heaven) or you use the term in context of other political Empires (Heiliges Römisches Reich deutscher Nation etc.) It is just a translation of Empire (i.e. Britisches Weltreich) Of course, "Drittes Reich" is negative, but, because of the Nazis and not because of Reich. I never heard that some right-wing Neonazis use the term nowadaysas said in the text. Were is that information from? 82.82.125.13 23:56, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No, I would say that "Reich" has a connotation of "German Imperialism" which is normally seen as negative. Words like "Frankreich" (France) or "Österreich" (Austria) are obviously free from such connotations (and the first syllable - not the "Reich"-part is stressed in pronounciation) whereas I wouldn't normally use "ReichsXXX". It is not as bad as "Führer" for example but I wouldn't use it create a new word like "Reichswikipedia". Zeitgeist 00:37, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the support. I've changed the article. -- Hokanomono 01:32, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Best English Translation

I just replaced "country" with "nation" in the translation of the slogan "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer". If they had meant "country" they would have used the German word "Land". "Nation" seems to be a better translation for "Reich". Although there exists the German word "Nation" as a direct German translation of "nation" (which was even part of the party name NSDPAP) it appears that they actually preferred the term "Reich" because of its German roots and its rich connotations. However, when I just turned to do the same change on Enabling Act I got second thoughts. In the English name of a law, "country" seems more appropriate than "nation". Sebastian 16:45, 2004 Oct 20 (UTC)

Hmm, Tuomas changed it back without giving any reason. This is the beginning of an edit war, and I don't want to participate in it. However, I have changed the word for a reason, which I explained here. I think it is fair to ask to respect this.

For now, I will peruse Wikipedia talk:Edit war and see if I find any proposals how to solve this harmoniously. If not, then I'll simply revert this change.

PS: Maybe Tuomas just misunderstood my remark about the 2nd thoughts. They only refer to the law. In a slogan, "nation" clearly fits better since it is an essential part of both party name and ideology. Sebastian 07:56, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)

I am not an expert, but, iirc the point about nationalism was the notion that a nation should have it's own state. Rather than "Reich" the word "Volk" might take the meaning of nation, which would lead to "One nation, one state, one leader". I cannot imagine a context when I would translate "Reich" with "nation". --Hokanomono 09:31, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see this on the talk page. I'm somewhat busy in RL at the moment. I can only agree with Hokanomono. BTW: I am not at all fond of edit wars, and do often use the technique to instead leave such articles for weeks or more. /Tuomas 06:11, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No harm done, thanks for your clarification! Hokanomono, don't worry, most of us are no experts, or else we wouldn't do this for free! Your idea is interesting - you’re thinking outside of the box by proposing to change the other word!

So now we have to look at more than just the word "Reich". Maybe we should start a little table with all terms in question, listing each possible translation on a separate row. Not sure if this exists already, I hope I’m not reinventing the wheel here. Rows with a question mark in the example column are questionable. Please fill in the blanks in these cases. This table is sorted by the English column (roughly thematically from concrete to abstract, not alphabetically). German terms that occur more than once have been colored to easily identify the different translations.

As the table shows, there are already two more suitable English terms for German "Volk" in our context, which I think fit better than the translation "nation".

The term "Reich" and the modifier "Reichs-" were used from the Holy Roman Empire to the Third Reich for official purposes representing Germany or its national institutions. (Examples: Kaiserreich, Reichsadler, Reichstag, Reichskanzler, Reichswehr) It corresponds to the usage of "national" in the US, "royal" in the UK, "imperial" in old China and Russia and "people's" in socialist countries. I believe that of these, "nation" and "national" are the most neutral translations and should therefore be preferred. Sebastian 06:17, 2004 Oct 25 (UTC)

The word "people" is ok for "Volk", I just wanted to demonstrate that "nation" is not a good translation for "Reich", because of ambiguity.

Appearently the word "national" is often used in contexts not related to a "nation". (f.e. "national television"). The article Country explains the terms country, nation, state, and land. (Therefore there is a difference between "national Socialism" and "National Socialism".)

You're right about the ambiguity - this applies to all proposed alternatives, which is why I started the table below. Thank you for the reference to country - this article has a name for what we need: nation-state. If you're concerned about ambiguity, then that should be our translation of choice. Sebastian 00:27, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

About the table: take care, taking "Bundesstaat" as an example for "Staat" is like taking "domestic science" as an example for "science". Also, a "state" in "United States of America" might not be a state in general context. But anyway, that's not our problem here. --Hokanomono 04:06, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Quite in the contrary. If you take a look at the Bavarian Constitution you will see that it uses the terms "Freistaat", "Bundesstaat" and "Staat" interchangeably.

Some of your changes in the table don't make sense to me:

• You entered "Frankreich, Österreich" as examples for words that are translated by "state" in English. The only way to translate these is "France, Austria".
• "country" is not just used colloquially. A google search on .gov pages alone yields about 6,060,000 results!

Sebastian 00:27, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

Rather than realm, the English word of a more direct derivation to Reich would be the element -ric as in bishopric.

Nuttyskin (talk) 10:56, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Chart of possible translations

Just a short note on this very interesting (albeit rather old) discussion. Carl Linnaeus introduced the well-known systematic taxonomy of living organisms and coined the term "kingdom" of plants and animals. Of course, he did not do this in English, but in Latin, and so he used the term "regnum" (which means "kingdom" (derived from "rex", king). It is now interesting to be aware of the fact that Linnaeus himself was Swedish, and so perhaps he may have had in mind not the Latin word "regnum" (which brings with it the idea of a ruler, a king), but rather the Swedish "rike", which is the equivalent of German "Reich". The German translation of "regnum" in this sense is, of course, Reich der Tiere, or Tierreich (Tier = animal). So Swedish and German have the possibility of describing an entity with specific rules, which is not necessarily a state, and without having the connotation of a ruler. Similarly, it is possible in German to speak of a Reich der Zahlen ("kingdom" of numbers). Candidus 01:34, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
I added some suggestions (in parens).Mtsmallwood (talk) 07:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Possible translations

German	English	Example	Comment/Context
Staat	state	der Staat Deutschland	Commonly used in this sense in Europe
Bundesstaat	(federal) state	Bundesstaat New York	Commonly used in this sense
Staat	(federal) state	Staat New York	Often used for preceding, e.g. in Bavarian constitution.
Bundesland	federal state		Commonly used
Land	federal state	Land Hessen	In this sense only used for federal states, as an abbreviation of preceding. In this specific meaning, it has become a loan word in other languages, such as French. Similar to the use of "land" for England, Scotland and Wales in the UK.
Reich	state	?	I am not aware of any case where "Reich" could best be translated by "state" or vice versa. (Perhaps "Ein volk, ein reich, ein Fuehrer" might be translated as "One people, one state, one leader"?)
Reich	country	Österreich, Frankreich	These words are remnants of a bygone time when these countries were monarchies. It would be absurd to use the word "Reich" in "we traveled to seven countries" or "my country, right or wrong".
Land	country		This is the primary meaning of "Land", it means both the country and the rural area, as in English.
Reich	empire	Kaiserreich, Reichsadler	Unlike German, English has no generic term for kingdom/empire that is independent of its ruler. ("Dominion" and "sovereignty" may come close.)
Reich	kingdom	Königreich	Unlike German, English has no generic term for kingdom/empire that is independent o its ruler.
Reichs-	national	Reichsautobahn	"Reichsautobahn" is neither "country road" nor "state street", but "national highway"! (Reich as a noun doesn't quite translate to "nation", but Reichs when used in a combining form can probably be translated as "National", because the intent in the German form is to distinguish between nation-wide and state or local scope of responsibility, authority, or function.)
Nation	nation	Nationalismus	This term was not commonly used during the Third Reich, presumably due to its obvious "ungerman" root. Whenever possible, the term "Reich" was used instead.
Volk	nation	Völkerbund	To my knowledge, " Völkerbund" was coined for the nonce and is the only case where "Volk" corresponds to "nation". In reality its members were "Staaten" and not "Völker".
Volk	people	Volkswagen, Volksrepublik	Common term during the Third Reich and the GDR; often used in propaganda. ("People" is the common translation" but the German word has overtones of "nation", "tribe" and "clan" -- no precise English translation exists.)
Volk	folk	Volksmusik
Reich	realm	Himmelreich	poetically, metaphorically
reich	rich		(adjective)

Realm is the best translation for Reich. 1. The Reichspräsident would be translated as President of the Realm and not of the Empire, or have you ever heard of a monarchy with a president? 2. German Empire should just be used to describe the Deutsches Kaiserreich from 1871-1918, because this state had an Emperor. 3. The word Reich has been used during the centuries, not important wether the system of reign was a monarchistic or a republican. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.221.242.232 (talk) 12:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Rike redirected

I could not see the merit in having the Swedish equivalent of Reich, so I redirected it here. They are identical in origin as well as meaning, so I recommend discussing the Swedish aspects here instead.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:06, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Fixed Spelling

Prince —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.167.67.54 (talk) 07:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC).

Reichsbahn - citation needed

This is a rather complicated matter, see Deutsche_Reichsbahn_of_the_GDR#The DR in Berlin during the Cold War. Gerhard51 19:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

wouldn't that translate as "German National Railway"?Mtsmallwood (talk) 07:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Imperium

Question on the following statement:

Like its Latin counterpart, imperium, Reich does not necessarily connote a monarchy; the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany continued to use the name Deutsches Reich.

On what basis is this statement made regarding the Latin term? The term imperium (military authority or control, later "empire") derives from imperator (dictator, general, later "emperor") which derives from impero, imperare (to command, to dictate). The original use of the term referred to the authority or area of control of a general. As the General Julius Caesar gained control of the entire Republic this became his "imperium" (most historians avoid referring to Caesar's domain as "imperium" but that was how the term was used at that time). Even after Caesar the term continued to be associated with a central ruler. It is true that the term did not originally imply a heriditary line as monarchy generally does. But the above statement seems to imply that imperium does not imply an autocratic ruler when in fact I believe it does. One can, of course, argue that the Sacrum Romanum Imperium did not have a truly autocratic ruler in its later years but, nevertheless, the Germans thought of the emperor as autocratic (for the purposes of prestige and a sense of history) and so I believe the Latin term's meaning still maintained this concept even if it was not accurately applied. --Mcorazao 16:09, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Dictionary entry?

At this risk of being unfair this reads as much like a dictionary entry as an encyclopedia article. Arguably one could say that this topic could be merged into one or more other articles since "Reich" can be viewed as a translation of other expressions. However, I would say that this article is marginially appropriate if it sticks to simply discussing historically a Reich is (in English) as opposed to an Empire or something else (i.e. I think a case can be made to say that the term actually does refer to something subtly distinct). But as written the article seems to be largely about the definition of the word (dictionary entry) and a collection of interesting annecdotes about how the word has been used historically. --Mcorazao 15:44, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Translation of Reich

There is an increasing use of the word realm to describe the Deutsches Reich and there is the fact that while empire has its own literal translation in German, Kaiserreich. The english word "realm" has no other translation in German other than reich, and reich is used like realm, to describe a variety of types of nations, i.e. a konigreich, means a kingdom not a King's Empire, while King's Realm is more possible. Opponents to using the word "realm" note the fact that reich is used to describe many empires. Supporters of the translation to realm, like me, counter that by pointing out that it is possible that Germans describe many empires as realms, unless they are consistent literal empires with emperors, in which they are called a kaiserreich, or that reich may be used as a shortened down version of kaiserreich.--R-41 10:30, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

See Talk:Deutsches Reich. No translation of "Reich" was officially done in the past to describe Germany 1919-1945 (magazine articles do not count as official), so to make the translation now is revisionist and original research. Whether or not there is an increasing use for it is irrelevant. 1-to-1 translation between German and English is not necessary. In English, we used "Reich" for this period and that is that. - 52 Pickup 13:10, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Merge

I suggest that the article Rike be merged into this article. It is unnecessary to have an article for each Germanic language that contains a cognate.--Berig 13:28, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

No objection, but what will you call it? --Doric Loon 16:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, Reich seems to be an actual borrowing into the English language, e.g. "Queen's reich", and there's is no English cognate that carries any meaning today. -ric in Bishopric appears to be a "Cranberry" morpheme (i.e. a formerly productive morpheme that only appears as fossile). It would be called either Reich or be named as the reconstructed Common Germanic form.--Berig 16:58, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Kaiserreich

I thought Kaiserreich meant empire. What does Reich alone mean? -Empire (Kaiserreich Empire of the Kaiser) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.164.211.112 (talk) 11:12, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Reich can mean empire. It can also mean kingdom, realm whatsoever. The ancient Roman Empire is called "Römisches Reich" (not Kaiserreich) in German. In case of Germany (HRE or modern German empire) it can mean both. The HRE was actually a kingdom (or conglommerate of kingdoms and fiefdoms) until the German king was crowned emperor. "Kaiserreich" is a very modern term. We sometimes call the 1871-1918 era "Kaiserreich", but this is more an explanation, like we say "Kaiserreich Japan".--MacX85 (talk) 08:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

No different from "nation"

I think this article is silly. If Hitler had not coined the "drittes Reich"-phrase ("third reich", nouns are always spelled with a capital letter in German) then this article had not existed. In Danish "rige", Swedish "rike", Dutch "rijk" and German "Reich" all means "nation". There's nothing more to it than so. And the formal name of Germany was during the entire time 1871 to 1945 Deutches Reich. During 1871-1918, the imperial time, sometimes "Deutches Kaiserreich" was in use aswell. But the first German Emperor, Wilhelm I didn't like Otto von Bismarck's idea of becoming Emperor, he preferred "King of Prussia". By the way, all three Emperors ruled during the year 1888. Vilhelm I died, then his son just some months later. And suddenly had Germany gone from an old ruler to a rather young, Wilhelm II, grandson of British Queen Victoria, and cousin with the becoming George V... Boeing720 (talk) 05:57, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure you are right. If Hitler had not coined the phrase "drittes Reich", this article would not exist. But precisely because Hitler coined it, a lot of English speakers believe that "Reich" is a Nazi word. So it's important to have an article that explains the real meaning of the word. -- User1961914 (talk) 18:22, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Strictly speaking a Reich is more loosely knitted than a nation, and are the precursor of centralized nation states, not the duirect equivalent. Germany is an exception there because the loose federation (patchwork of fiefdoms under one emperor figurehead) system persisted much longer after medieval times. 88.159.71.34 (talk) 10:25, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Wiktionary link

At the moment the link directs to the entry for reich (lower case) whereas the more correct entry would be Reich (capitalized). In German nouns have the first letter capitalized, and for nouns that share the same spelling as other words, Wiktionary treats them as different words that receive different entries. I don't suppose there's a way to change this? The way the Wiktionary tag seems to work, it doesn't seem possible to change it to direct to another entry. —Masterblooregard (talk) 22:29, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

The "modern age" section is unsourced, irrelevant and tendentious

The whole "modern age" section is unsourced, most of it is irrelevant to the topic, and much of it is tendentious. It ought to be removed or rewritten. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 11:57, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Linking twice to same content from one article

Sorry, i got confused about what i'd seen!
   The edit history of the sentence

As such, the term Deutsches Reich (often translated to "German Empire") continued to be used even after the collapse of the German Empire and abolition of the monarchy in 1918, without any imperial connotations.

may deserve attention against the possibility that it made more sense in an earlier stage (e.g., before two articles were merged, making on into a Rdr to the other) than it did when i found it today: the use, in one article, of two links to the same other article (whether or not a Rdr and/or piping is involved) is a structure to be diligently avoided, since it wastes the time, and (in some ways more importantly) the patience, of readers by inviting them to twice link to that article, and likely wastes their resources by distracting them back to an article that they had just been led to earlier within the same graph or article.
--Jerzy•t 02:33 & 02:43, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

surely "reach" is an English cognate?

The article claims that the Old English cognate is obsolete, and the inference is that there is no cognate in modern English. But surely <reach> is a cognate? It's almost a perfect translation of at least some senses of the german *reichen*, of which *Reich* is the noun form. Ok you might object that <reach> is a verb not a noun. It does have noun forms, but they don't mean "kingdom" or anything like that (unless you're reading Game of Thrones). But it surely still warrants mention as a cognate? It's at least as relevant or more so than the other cognate, the English word <rich>, which gets a mention.

Unless it's not a cognate? This article cites the Old English form as *rīce* whereas Wiktionary:reach#Etymology says it's *rǣċan*. But surely that's just orthographic variation, perhaps due to the fact that we're comparing noun and verbal forms, or else just normal variability? -lethe ^{talk + contribs} 15:51, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Table of "Reiches"

What is the use of this table? It adds nothing of value. Any useful information that could be gained from it is already included in the text (i.e. the numbering of the First, Second and Third Reich respectively, which is not that hard to understand without the use of a table anyway) or is wildly misleading at best. What is gained by the column "number of Reich"? What justification could there be for the column "Full name of Reich" when the article explicitly mentions that the terms 'First Reich' and 'Second Reich' were only coined as Nazi propaganda, were never officially used and are rejected by modern historians? On what basis was decided which languages to include in the column "Language(s)" and what even is the use or context for their inclusion, having nothing to do with the term "Reich"? This whole table should be removed without replacement. Cunctator203 (talk) 16:47, 27 January 2024 (UTC)