The German Spitz is German!
Recently, I looked on Facebook without a care in the world, and suddenly I came across an English-language article about the origin of the word "Spitz":
The genesis of the word, “Spitz” as it applies to a dog, is interesting. In German, it means “pointed,” but the word derives from the Old Dutch, which literally translates to “pointed peaks.” This is a reference to the snow-capped mountain peaks of northern European and sub-Arctic regions, and as people tended to refer to dogs of their culture using familiar terms, they referred to dogs with pointed ears and wedge-shaped muzzles by the word, "Spitz.” Even today, Germans refer to them as “tips” or “peaks.”[1]
Our breed name "Spitz" is supposed to come from Old Dutch??? 😲
First I thought I was going to have a heart attack, then I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and then I got angry. It wasn't enough that our German dog breeds were completely randomly renamed "Pomeranian", "Keeshond" or "Alsatian" (for the German Shepherd), no, now even the ancient breed name "Spitz" suddenly comes from abroad!
We read that the origin of the word is in Old Dutch and refers to snow-capped mountain peaks. That's so stupid that you'd have to laugh yourself to death - if it wasn't also such an impertinence!
To start with, just compare the extent of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the size of the united Netherlands on the map of 1648 (below). Germany was clearly the heartland of Central Europe. So who influenced whom?! But okay, let's take a look into the books:
In Brockhaus's Encyclopedia we read the following about the surface structure of the Netherlands: "Almost the entire country is lowland and a continuation of the great German plain." [2] Lowland. Land so low that the Netherlands is permanently in danger to be flooded. Logically, there are no mountains worth mentioning there - and certainly none with snow-capped peaks.
It is also the case that a language simply cannot have its own terms for things that do not occur in that language area.
Why not? Because language is the crystallization point at which the experience of a folk is reflected. Language is both an extract and a condensation of a folk's experience of the world. If a region has no mountains with snow-capped peaks, the people living there cannot invent their own words for it due to a lack of world experience; they have to borrow these terms from other languages. An example:
In Germany the beech tree is named "Buche" - a word that comes from the Old High German "buchha". The Kurdish word "buz", which is related to the word "Buche" (beech), refers to the elm tree. And the Russian "buz" refers to the elder tree. Since the beech tree is only native to Central and Western Europe, the Germanic word must have originated there. The peoples migrating eastward retained the Germanic name and then applied it to other tree species in the east.
Dutch is a German dialect
The English word for the language that is spoken in the Netherlands, the word "Dutch" reminds you of another word, don't you?! Well, what could I mean? Exactly, "Dutch" sounds like "Deutsch" (German). And not without reason:
"The Dutch language, together with the Flemish dialect, belongs to the Low Franconian dialects. It is the only one among all German dialects that has become an independent written language in contrast to High German." [3]
This means nothing other than that Dutch is a German dialect. And that is why "Dutch" means German, because for the Anglo-Saxons, what the Dutch spoke and speak was German.
The standard Dutch language itself only developed from the Low German dialect from the 16th century onwards and experienced a further branch in the Afrikaans of the Boers.
German is a primordial language
As Jacob Grimm wrote:
"No folk on earth has such a history for its language as the German. The sources reach back two thousand years into its past, and in these two thousand years no century is without testimony and monument" [4],
He did not yet know that we can look back much further with the eyes of our language. Our German word-history takes us back to the Stone Age. For example, that of the knife: West Germanic "mati-sahs" is composed of "food" (Old Saxon "mat") and "sword" (actually "stone knife"), Anglo-Saxon "seax", to which the "Saxons" also belong, closely related to Latin "saxum" = stone. Literal translation of the early form of knife: "food (stone) sword".
We Germans are one of the few cultural nations who still have our original language. This means that we have a vocabulary derived from our root words and passed down without gaps - until now. Original in this case means that there has been an uninterrupted development from the Germanic roots to the modern written language of High German. The other languages of Central Europe, however, have all been Romanized, except for German. We have Arminius to thank for this, who massively pushed back the Romans and with them the Romance language in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest and saved us from suffering a similar fate to the Gauls.
In plain language, this means that the word "Spitz" is inevitably, without a doubt and exclusively a very German word, since the Dutch language is just a German dialect. This way - and only this way - makes sense.
Let us derive the word "Spitz" properly
The root word "Spitz" is as ancient as our breed of dog. The Spitz dogs got their name from certain striking features in their external appearance, namely the pointed ears and the wedge-shaped head with the pointed snout. The word "Spitz" in Old High German is derived from:
spiz (ohg.) = peak, mountain peak (nhg.)
spizza (ohg.) = point, spike, thorn, pile, summit, hill (nhg.) [5]
In 1780, the Germanist Johann Christoph Adelung was the first to mention the Spitz dog breed in his book "Versuch eines vollständigen grammatisch-kritischen Wörterbuchs der Hochdeutschen Mundart" (Attempt at a Complete Grammatical-Critical Dictionary of High German Dialect), noting that the breed was named after its pointed head shape: "[...] with a long head tapering towards the snout, from which they also get their name". [6]
If we follow the root word "Spitz" further, it grows together with the word "Spieß" (pike), in Old High German "spizzi". The pike was a very important weapon for thousands of years. While the anointed knight mostly fought with a spear and lance, the common infantry fought with the pike. And the Spitz, the people's dog, was just as common as the pike.
However, Spitz's excellent guarding qualities were always considered extremely unpleasant by vagabonds, so the term "Spitzel" (spy) gradually emerged in the rogue's language - Rotwelsch - in the sense of "watcher" and "telltale". Gendarmes, on the other hand, were called "Teckel" or "Dachshund".
In a figurative sense, "spitz" is very often used in the sense of "pointy", "sophisticated", e.g. "to get to the bottom of something", or in a reproachful sense such as "to have a sharp tongue".
No such thing as Old Dutch! 😎
The dog of Kees?
And now that I've warmed up, let's talk about the Keeshond. According to the well-known Dutch legend, this breed was named after the Dutch patriot Cornelis de Gyzelaar, nickname "Kees". Cornelis was active towards the end of the 18th century and since he was always accompanied by a Spitz dog. This is probably how the Dutch name "Keeshond" - as the dog of Kees - for the Wolfspitz came about.
I have a lot of old books, including Brockhaus's Conversation Encyclopedia from 1895. This "encyclopedia" consists of 17 thick, fat volumes, the individual pages printed in tiny font. It really does contain everything, but the aforementioned Cornelis de Gyzelaar is not mentioned anywhere. Bear in mind that these encyclopedias were published just 100 years after Cornelis' work. If this "Kees" had really been such a big deal, wouldn't he have been mentioned at some point?
The Netherlands used to be a great seafaring nation that was very successful in global trade and had colonies all over the world. I therefore think it is much more likely that the Dutch brought the dogs they call "Keeshonden" back from their sea voyages than that they bred them themselves.
Or the dog from the ice?
The name "Kees" is probably the short form of the name "Cornelis" in Dutch, but the word can also be derived from Old High German::
"Kes" (Old High German) = "ice-cold" and "Kees".
The word "Kees" means a glacier or the eternal ice - both in Old High German and in the Austrian dialect [7]
The derivation of the name "Keeshond" as "dog from the ice" or "dog from the cold" or even "glacier dog" is much more logical than the common legend of the patriot's dog. These first Keeshonds were possibly Nordic Spitz dogs that the Dutch brought back home from their sea voyages in the far north. One possible example is the Elkhound - which looks like a short-haired Wolfspitz - another one the Finnish Lapphund. Both breeds have thick, cold-resistant coats, so they are dogs from the ice, and also have the typical appearance of a Spitz.
It is possible that these "dogs from the ice" were then gradually mated with the Spitz dogs that were already known from the German Rhine ships. This would also explain why many Keeshonds are so different from our Spitz dogs, namely much friendlier and less alert.
This is of course pure theory, but the popular legend of Cornelis de Gyzelaar’s patriot dog is not science either. 😉
About cultural appropriation and pride in one’s own
One of the reasons I find the parody of the word "Spitz" as coming from the "Old Dutch" (which we now know is just a German dialect), so annoying is because other countries are constantly stealing our breed of dog. The process is always the same: our Spitz is exported to other countries, renamed there and then passed off as a native breed. This is how our Toy Spitzes became "Pomeranians", our Wolfspitzes became "Keeshonden" and our white Giant Spitzes, imported on a large scale by the Japanese, became "Japanese Spitzes". What's next? The Nigerian Spitz? The Chinese large Spotz? The fluffy ringtail Umbulumbu?
Unfortunately, surprisingly few Spitz lovers from Germany become angry by this act of cultural appropriation - because the German Spitz is nothing other than a part of Germanic culture. On the contrary, those people like what's happening and they applaud the thieves.
Why is that so? Well, because our installed repertoire of thought includes the internalized assumption that we Germans have always been evil and guilty and that everything German must therefore be abolished. As a German, you should be ashamed. That is why many Germans reject anything that even reminds them of pride. Proud of Germany and of the achievements of other Germans? For heaven's sake, no way! As a German, you should put on your donkey ears and stand in the corner full of shame.
The complementary emotion to this shame is pride. To be proud means that you are filled with self-confidence and joy about something you own or have achieved. And we can be proud: Germany was and is the heartland of Europe. German almost became the language of science. No other country in Europe is so rich in culture, none has such a deep, ancient language, about which Jean Paul said: "German is the organ among the languages". No other country has produced as many great minds as Schiller, Goethe, Handel, Beethoven, Mozart, Nietzsche etc. (the list is endless). And that is why we can be proud - and we are allowed to defend our property. And our oldest breed of dog, the GERMAN Spitz, belongs to our property. A German breed! Not a "Smiling Dutchman". No European Spitz or any such nonsense, but exclusively a German one.
"Germania est delenda": Germany must be destroyed - since 1895
Now many Germans will think "How can we be proud of ourselves - look what we have done in the past?!". But we can. The desire to keep Germany as small as possible is much older than the two world wars. [8] As early as August 1895, almost exactly 129 years ago, a series of articles began in the British weekly newspaper "The Saturday Review" calling for the destruction of Germany (sic!) and whose ominous greed for German booty literally jumps out at you when you read it:
"Second, be ready to fight Germany, as Germania est delenda (Germany must be destroyed)." [9]
"When, in February 1895, one of our writers, discussing the European situation, declared Germany the first and immediate enemy of England, [...]. War with Germany!" [10]
"[...] and to say to France and Russia ‘Seek some compensation. Take inside Germany whatever you like: you can have it'. [...] 'Germania esse delendam'" [10]
And I repeat: These anti-German statements were made from 1895 onwards, when war was not yet an option.
This old anti-Germanism still has an effect today and recently led, for example, to the German Spitz not being allowed to keep its German size designations in America - like many other non-American breeds that are not renamed - but instead these size designations were anglicized, much to the outrage of the board of the "German Spitz Club of America". The Americans now say at the command of the AKC: Toy Spitz, Medium Spitz and Large Spitz instead of Kleinspitz, Mittelspitz and Großspitz.
However, the German Spitz is a German cultural asset, it is part of German past and history, so please be outraged! Don't just let yourself be robbed and stop helping the thieves. Only when you respect yourself will others respect you! So who do we want to be? A folk that is self-confident and knows its worth? Or the folk that already was accused by the great Friedrich Schiller more than 200 years ago?
"Eternal shame to the German son,
Who the innate crown
Of his human nobility spurns,
Who bows before foreign idols,
Pays homage to the Briton's dead treasures
and to the splendor of the Franks –?" [11]
Conclusion
Germans, let's stop looking enviously abroad! Let's give our German Spitzes German names again. Stop it to call our Spitz "European" just to play nice to foreign breeders.
We Germans speak one of the last original languages and this ancient language is also where the name for our oldest dog breed comes from, which is simply "Spitz". This dog breed has accompanied the people of the German tribes for thousands of years, although probably in a less established form than today. The German Spitz is therefore the cultural property of all Germans, it is a part of their history, part of their development. And therefore we should hold our German Spitz up and care for it with pride and, above all, preserve it for all future generations. 💪🏻
[1] https://www.facebook.com/share/p/W9Rr1ejYPrd8SCzm/?mibextid=WC7FNe
[2] Brockhaus' Konversationslexikon, volume 12, p. 328, Leipzig 1895
[3] Brockhaus' Konversationslexikon, volume 12, p. 345, Leipzig 1895
[4] Jacob Grimm: "Über den Ursprung der Sprache", Berlin 1852
[5] Gerhard Köbler: "Wörterbuch des althochdeutschen Sprachschatzes"
[6] "Ein gewöhnlicher Nahme einer Art kleiner zottiger Hunde, mit einem langen nach der Schnauze zu zugespitzten Kopfe, von welchem sie auch den Nahmen haben. In Obersachsen pflegt man diese Art Hunde auch Pommer zu nennen, weil sie aus diesem Lande herstammen sollen. 2. In der vertraulichen Sprechart ist der Spitz und im Diminutivo das Spitzchen, ein geringerer Grad des Rausches, da man nur bis zur Fröhlichkeit getrunken hat; welchen Grad des Rausches man auch wohl einen Jesuiter-Rausch, einen Ansatz u. s. f. zu nennen pflegt. Einen Spitz, oder ein Spitzchen haben. Der Ursprung dieser Benennung ist mir unbekannt; vielleicht gründet sich selbige, wie andere ähnliche Ausdrücke (S. Haarbeutel, Nagel u. s. f.) auf einen individuellen, nunmehr vergessenen Umstand. In vielen Oberdeutschen Gegenden heißt eine jede Spitze im männlichen Geschlechte der Spitz."
[7] Der Sprach-Brockhaus: Deutsches Bilderwörterbuch für jedermann, Leipzig 1935
[8] In contrast to the domestic view, it is now considered proven abroad that Germany neither forced nor started the First World War, but was forced into it by means of a policy of encirclement.
[9] The Saturday Review from February 1st, 1896. p. 120
[10] The Saturday Review from September 11th, 1897. p. 278f.
[11] Really bad translation of Friedrich Schiller: "Deutsche Größe (Zur Feier der Jahrhundertwende)"
[12] Pic: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Norwegian_Elkhound.jpg
Further literature: Richard W. Eichler: "Verhexte Muttersprache", 1974, Adam Kraft Verlag München
15.07.2024
