Reich

***Reich*** is a German noun whose meaning is analogous to the English word "realm"; this is not to be confused with the German adjective "reich" which means "rich". The terms *Kaiserreich* (literally the "realm of an emperor") and *Königreich* (literally the "realm of a king") are respectively used in German in reference to empires and kingdoms. The *Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary* indicates that in English usage, the term "the Reich" refers to "Germany during the period of Nazi control from 1933 to 1945".

The term *Deutsches Reich* (sometimes translated to "German Empire") continued to be used even after the collapse of the German Empire and the abolition of the monarchy in 1918. There was no emperor, but many Germans had imperialistic ambitions. According to Richard J. Evans:

> The continued use of the term "German Empire", *Deutsches Reich*, by the Weimar Republic ... conjured up an image among educated Germans that resonated far beyond the institutional structures Bismarck created: the successor to the Roman Empire; the vision of God's Empire here on earth; the universality of its claim to suzerainty; and in a more prosaic but no less powerful sense, the concept of a German state that would include all German speakers in central Europe—"one People, one Reich, one Leader", as the Nazi slogan was to put it.
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The term is derived from the Germanic word which generally means "realm", but in German, it is typically used to designate a kingdom or an empire, especially the Roman Empire. The terms *Kaisertum* ("Imperium") and *Kaiserreich* ("Imperial realm") are used in German to more specifically define an empire ruled by an emperor.

*Reich* is comparable in meaning and development (as well as descending from the same Proto-Indo-European root) to the English word *realm* (via French *reaume* "kingdom" from Latin *regalis* "royal"). It is used for historical empires in general, such as the Roman Empire (*Römisches Reich*), Persian Empire (*Perserreich*), and both the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire (*Zarenreich*, literally "Tsars' realm"). *Österreich*, the name used for Austria today is composed of "Öster" and "Reich" which, literally translated, means "Eastern Realm". The name once referred to the Eastern parts of the Holy Roman Empire.

In the history of Germany specifically, it is used to refer to:

* the early medieval Frankish Realm (Francia) and Carolingian Empire (the *Fränkisches Reich* and *Karolingerreich*);
* the Holy Roman Empire (*Heiliges Römisches Reich*), which lasted from the coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800, until 1806, when it was dissolved during the Napoleonic Wars;
* the German Empire (*Deutsches Reich* or *Deutsches Kaiserreich*), which lasted from the unification of Germany in 1871 until its collapse after World War I, during the German Revolution of 1918–1919;
* the Weimar Republic of 1919–1933 continued to use *Deutsches Reich* as its official name;
* Nazi Germany, the state often referred to as the *Third Reich*, which lasted from the Enabling Act in 1933 until the end of World War II in Europe in 1945. It continued to use the official name, *Deutsches Reich*, until 1943, when it was renamed to the *Großdeutsches Reich* (Greater German Reich).

The Nazis adopted the term "Third Reich" to legitimize their government as the rightful successor to the retroactively renamed "First" and "Second" Reichs – the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire, respectively; the Nazis discounted the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic entirely. The terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich" are not used by historians, and the term "Fourth Reich" is mainly used in fiction and political humor, although it is also used by those who subscribe to neo-Nazism.

## Etymology

The German noun *Reich* is derived from Old High German: *rīhhi*, which together with its cognates in Old English: *rīce*, Old Norse: *ríki*, and Gothic: reiki is derived from a Common Germanic \**rīkijan*. The English noun survives only in the compounds *bishopric* and *archbishopric*.

The German adjective *reich*, on the other hand, has an exact cognate in English rich. Both the noun (\**rīkijan*) and the adjective (\**rīkijaz*) are derivations based on the Common Germanic \**rīks* "ruler, king", reflected in Gothic as *reiks*, glossing ἄρχων "leader, ruler, chieftain".

It is probable that the Germanic word was not inherited from pre-Proto-Germanic, but rather loaned from Celtic (i.e. Gaulish *rīx*, Welsh *rhi*, both meaning 'king') at an early time.

The word has many cognates outside of Germanic and Celtic, notably Latin: *rex* and Sanskrit: राज, romanized: *raj*, lit. 'rule'. It is ultimately from Proto-Indo-European \**reg-*, lit. 'to straighten out or rule'.

## Usage throughout German history

### Frankish Empire

*Frankenreich* or *Fränkisches Reich* is the German name given to the Frankish Kingdom of Charlemagne. *Frankenreich* came to be used of Western Francia and medieval France after the development of Eastern Francia into the Holy Roman Empire. The German name of France, *Frankreich*, is a contraction of *Frankenreich* used in reference to the kingdom of France from the late medieval period.

### Holy Roman Empire

The term *Reich* was part of the German names for Germany for much of its history. *Reich* was used by itself in the common German variant of the Holy Roman Empire, (*Heiliges Römisches Reich (HRR)*). *Der rîche* was a title for the Emperor. However, Latin, not German, was the formal legal language of the medieval Empire (*Imperium Romanum Sacrum*), so English-speaking historians are more likely to use Latin *imperium* than German *Reich* as a term for this period of German history. The common contemporary Latin legal term used in documents of the Holy Roman Empire was for a long time *regnum* ("rule, domain, empire", such as in *Regnum Francorum* for the Frankish Kingdom) before *imperium* was in fact adopted, the latter first attested in 1157, whereas the parallel use of *regnum* never fell out of use during the Middle Ages.

#### Modern age

At the beginning of the modern age, some circles redubbed the HRE into the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" (*Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation*), a symptom of the formation of a German nation state as opposed to the multinational state the Empire was throughout its history.

Resistance against the French revolution with its concept of the state brought a new movement to create a German "ethnical state", especially after the Napoleonic wars. Ideal for this state was the Holy Roman Empire; the legend arose that Germany were "un-defeated when unified", especially after the Franco-Prussian War (*Deutsch-Französischer Krieg*, lit. "German-French war"). Before that, the German question ruptured this "German unity" after the 1848 Revolution before it was achieved, however; Austria-Hungary as a multinational state could not become part of the new "German empire", and nationality conflicts in Prussia with the Prussian Poles arose ("We can never be Germans – Prussians, every time!").

The advent of national feeling and the movement to create an ethnically German Empire did lead directly to nationalism in 1871. Ethnic minorities declined since the beginning of the modern age; the Polabs, Sorbs and even the once important Low Germans had to assimilate themselves. This marked the transition between Antijudaism, where converted Jews were accepted as full citizens (in theory), to Antisemitism, where Jews were thought to be from a different ethnicity that could never become German. Apart from all those ethnic minorities being de facto extinct, even today the era of national feeling is taught in history in German schools as an important stepping-stone on the road to a German nation.

### German Reich

In the case of the Hohenzollern Empire (1871–1918), the official name of the country was *Deutsches Reich* ("German Realm"), because under the Constitution of the German Empire, it was legally a confederation of German states under the permanent presidency of the King of Prussia. The constitution granted the King of Prussia the title of "German Emperor" (*Deutscher Kaiser*), but this referred to the German nation rather than directly to the *state* of Germany.

The exact translation of the term "German Empire" would be *Deutsches Kaiserreich*. This name was sometimes used informally for Germany between 1871 and 1918, but it was disliked by the first German Emperor, Wilhelm I, and never became official.

The unified Germany which arose under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1871 was the first entity that was officially called in German *Deutsches Reich*. *Deutsches Reich* remained the official name of Germany until 1945, although these years saw three very different political systems more commonly referred to in English as: "the German Empire" (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933; this term is a post-World War II coinage not used at the time), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945).

### During the Weimar Republic

After 1918 "Reich" was usually not translated as "Empire" in English-speaking countries, and the title was instead simply used in its original German. During the Weimar Republic the term *Reich* and the prefix *Reichs-* referred not to the idea of empire but rather to the institutions, officials, affairs etc. of the whole country as opposed to those of one of its constituent federal states (*Länder*), in the same way that the terms *Bund* (federation) and *Bundes-* (federal) are used in Germany today, and comparable to *The Crown* in Commonwealth countries and *The Union* in the United States.

### During the Nazi period

The Nazis sought to legitimize their power historiographically by portraying their ascendancy to rule as the direct continuation of an ancient German past. They adopted the term *Drittes Reich* ("Third Empire" – usually rendered in English in the partial translation "the Third *Reich*"), first used in a 1923 book entitled *Das Dritte Reich* by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, that counted the medieval Holy Roman Empire (which nominally survived until the 19th century) as the first and the 1871–1918 monarchy as the second, which was then to be followed by a "reinvigorated" third one. The Nazis ignored the previous 1918–1933 Weimar period, which they denounced as a historical aberration, contemptuously referring to it as "the System". In the summer of 1939, the Nazis themselves actually banned the continued use of the term in the press, ordering it to use expressions such as *Nationalsozialistisches Deutschland* ("National Socialist Germany"), *Großdeutsches Reich* ("Greater German Reich"), or simply *Deutsches Reich* (German Reich) to refer to the German state instead. It was Adolf Hitler's personal desire that *Großdeutsches Reich* and *nationalsozialistischer Staat* ("[the] National Socialist State") would be used in place of *Drittes Reich*. *Reichskanzlei Berchtesgaden* ("Reich Chancellery Berchtesgaden"), another nickname of the regime (named after the eponymous town located in the vicinity of Hitler's mountain residence where he spent much of his time in office) was also banned at the same time, despite the fact that a sub-section of the Chancellery was in fact installed there to serve Hitler's needs.

Although the term "Third Reich" is still commonly used in reference to the Nazi dictatorship, historians avoid using the terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich", which are seldom found outside Nazi propaganda. During and following the *Anschluss* (annexation) of Austria in 1938, Nazi propaganda also used the political slogan *Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer* ("One nation, one *Reich*, one leader"), in order to enforce pan-German sentiment. The term *Altes Reich* ("old Reich"; cf. French *ancien regime* for monarchical France) is sometimes used to refer to the Holy Roman Empire. The term *Altreich* was also used after the Anschluss to denote Germany with its pre-1938 post-World War I borders. Another name that was popular during this period was the term *Tausendjähriges Reich* ("Thousand-Year Reich"), the millennial connotations of which suggested that Nazi Germany would last a thousand years.

The Nazis also spoke of enlarging the then-established Greater German Reich into a "Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation" (*Großgermanisches Reich Deutscher Nation*) by gradually and directly annexing all of the historically Germanic countries and regions of Europe into the Nazi state (Flanders, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden etc.).