Talk:Reich

message: “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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  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)
replies: text:  Thanks for the support. I've changed the article. -- Hokanomono 01:32, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Connotation of the Word

message: 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)
thread_title: Chart of possible translations

message: 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)
thread_title:  [[Rike]] redirected 

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

message: 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)
replies: text: wouldn't that translate as "German National Railway"?Mtsmallwood (talk) 07:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Reichsbahn - citation needed

message: 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)
thread_title:  Imperium 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Dictionary entry? 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Translation of Reich 

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

message: 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)
thread_title:  Kaiserreich 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  No different from "nation" 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Wiktionary link 

message: 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)
thread_title: The "modern age" section is unsourced, irrelevant and tendentious

message: Sorry, i got confused about what i'd seen!<BR>
   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)
thread_title:  Linking twice to same content from one article 

message: 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)
thread_title:  surely "reach" is an English cognate? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Table of "Reiches" 

message: Hi, regarding Scandinavian usage, the statement " ...The word is traditionally used for sovereign entities, generally simply means "country" or "nation" (in the sense of a sovereign state) and does not have any special or political connotations. It does not imply any particular form of government ..." doesn't quite hit the mark. The entities "rike" is traditionally used for, are historically sovereign, and usually large. If Andorra had a king, although it would then be a 'kongedømme' (as '-dømme' specifically pertains the type of government), it  wouldn't be referred to as a "kongerike" (other than humorously). And the general word for country and nation is "land": England, Irland, Skottland, Nederland, Grekenland ... with variations, of course, notably Frankrike and Østerrike (but not Tyskland :) ). So ... 'rike' doesn't imply any particular form of government, but it does imply _a_ government, i.e., the area in question has a ruler of some kind; bear i mind that, like in German, it can _also_ mean 'empire'. Trivia: For the 'Norse Empire' of Haakon IV, the word is 'Norgesvelde"; 'velde' being cognate to GE 'walten' and probably EN 'wield/weald'(sp?). But beware of people who speak of it without irony =o)  T 84.208.65.62 (talk) 22:37, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rule