The German Question, Part Ninety-Eight

"Germany's Weimar Republic" Part One

With Germany defeated in World War One and the Kaiser gone, the new German republic tried to govern the country. Delegates met in the city of Weimar to forge a constitution;* thus the "unofficial" name of the new republic, "The Weimar Republic;" its proper designation simply being, "Deutsches Reich." The country was dispirited and many factions, both of the political left and right, seemed ready to pull the fragile new system apart. Communist elements actually claimed a Soviet republic in Bavaria, only to be defeated by former soldiers organized and led by right wing officers. These right wing units and militias were called the "Freikorps," or "Free Corps," and they provided the basis for many other right wing political organizations, including what was to become the Nazi Party.

* Weimar is located in east central Germany in the state of Thuringia (Thüringen in German).

WORD HISTORY:
Fret-This is the verb meaning "be anxious, worry;" often used in expressions like, "don't fret over" something. This word traces back to Indo European "ed/et," which meant "to bite," and it is closely related to "eat" (see the Word History at this link for "eat:" http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/05/german-question-part-ninety-seven.html ). "Fret" is actually a compound, with the "fr" tracing back to Old Germanic "fra," which was used as an intensifier; in this case, intensifying "eat," to mean "eat gluttonously, to gobble up." The Old Germanic compound was "fraetanan" (see further below) with that meaning. This gave Anglo-Saxon (Old English) "fretan," with the same meaning, including for animals. Later it was "freten," and the basic meaning of "gobble up" came to be used pretty much exclusively for animals or derogatorily for crude people. At that same time, around 1200, the more figurative sense of "to eat up with worry" developed. Gradually, the "gobble up" meaning died out, leaving English with the "worry" sense into the modern era. Common in the other Germanic languages, German has "fressen" which still retains the primary meaning "to eat, but only for animals," unless when used as an insult to someone (it also has the secondary meanings "corrode" [see Swedish below] and "worry excessively," as in English). "Fressen" was once spelled various ways in older forms of German, including "veretzen" and "vretzen." Low German has both "fräte" and "freten," both meaning "eat up, for animals," Dutch has "vreten," also with the meaning "take in food," often used of animals, West Frisian has "frette" (to eat, to feed, for animals), Swedish has "fräta," which means "corrode;" that is, "eat away." Danish has "fråse," meaning "to eat up greedily." I did not find examples in Icelandic or Norwegian. I'm not sure, but the old compound form of "fraetanan" may have been a West Germanic formation, rather than Old Germanic, as it appears that both Swedish and Danish borrowed forms of the word, likely from Low German and German, respectively, as I could not find a form in Old Norse, the forerunner of the modern North Germanic languages (Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Swedish are most prominent), and that would explain the absence of forms in Norwegian and Icelandic. Old Germanic was the parent language of North, West and East Germanic. Forms of East Germanic have all died out and English, Frisian, German, Low German and Dutch are West Germanic.