The Wooden Fence, Denazified

Just when you think you knew everything about the Nazis, along comes the German Society for Garden Art and Landscape Culture* with an exhibition on Nazi gardening: Zwischen Jägerzaun und Größenwahn. Freiraumgestaltung in Deutschland 1933–1945. I'll try to translate this directly, so you can get an idea of the turgidity of German gallery-speak: 'Between the Hunters' Fence and Megalomania: Free-space Design in Germany 1933-1945'.

There was apparently even a National Socialist way to design your garden. Take it away, Hans Hasler: 'All culture and thefore all art and its styles -- this truth has now become generally-accepted in Germany -- always emerges and lives from a national and racial essence. The false image of an "international culture", or a "world culture" belongs to the past, at least for us Germans.' (German Garden Art, 1939).

New to me was the controversy swirling around a particular kind of garden fence, the so-called 'Hunters' Fence', made of diagonal wooden slats:

The article assures us that it was long considered the 'essence of Nazi garden design', but apparently the conference has exploded this myth, along with others, such as that Nazis zoos contained mainly 'Germanic' animals, or that Nazi gardens were known for their straight axes and sharp edges. Apparently Germans favored hunters' fences and right angles long before the Nazis, and still do to this day. I'll leave you to work out the implications of this.

* Sounding pretentious in German is easier than you think -- all you'll need to do is add Kunst (art) or Kultur (culture) to the end of any word you'd like to hifalutinize. Thus gardening becomes Gartenkunst and landscaping is Landschaftkultur. Fancy stores are Wohnkultur (homeculture), and you can often practice your Kochkunst (cookingart) there of an evening. The possibilities are endless: Autokunst, Hifikultur, Gesprächskunst, Fickkunst, Nacktschneckenkultur, etc. Mix & match up your own pretentious neologisms!

Comments

[italian porcelain]

Hitler garden plants! Was only a matter of time. This is it, here where the Satire.Das has surpassed himself Giudo Knopp not be the first married, he will be annoyed beautiful ...

[Zaungast]

I strongly feel that "Kochkunst" doesn't belong in that list.

The key to "hifalutin" German words is to use semi-suffixes (-kunst/-kultur) that aren't really necessary, that don't add to the meaning, in fact that even make the meaning more fuzzy and obscure. Another representation of this fashion is the omnipresent "-bereich" (which is just redundant in most cases).

However, "Kochkunst" is a succinct word with a clear meaning. I dare say it is the ideal of efficient usage of language, so it can't possibly be fashionable rhetorics.

[Andrew]

@Martin: Believe it or not, I spent 15.4 seconds trying to decide between 'hifalutinize' and 'spiffify'. What can I say, I like creating / repurposing / depurposing words.

[Chris]

Apparently, "hifalutin" is an alternative spelling of "highfalutin", which means "pompous or pretentious". "Highfalutinize" as "to make something (sound) pretentious" is still a creative neologism, though, turning up in only one context on Google.

[Martin]

Ok, Andrew, now you got me. My English speaking (and writing) skills could be better, but my vocabulary is quite big. But "turgidity" and "hifalutinize" I didn't know.

Ok, "turgidity" I know now. But "hifalutinize" is still beyond me. Do you know that hifalutinize is a Googlewhackblatt?

Which makes me wonder if there is anyone in the world who knows its meaning. Or is it a typo?

Martin

[renke]

Fickkunst? How vulgar. *Real* Fickgenießer prefer Geschlechtsverkehrkultur :)