Abstract

This paper comments on Victor Klemperer’s LTI, chapter XIII. First, the book is situated in an ensemble of simultaneously published works that were formative for the pre‑Federal-Republic »Aufarbeitung« of the Nazi past (thesis 1). Second, it is shown that Klemperer’s tripartite chapter on names in LTI lays out the general tendency of the Nazi ideologization of language in detail. Chapter XIII thus concludes with a remarkable punch line in which Klemperer’s onomasiological analysis ironically and tragically coincides with his personal testimony (thesis 2). Third, Klemperer’s rather unsystematic, phenomenon-oriented analysis of both proper and local names is supplemented by a necessary logical-semantic, linguistic-pragmatic, linguistic-anthropological and linguistic-theological perspective. It is argued for the thesis that LTI-ideologization of language, as described in detail by Klemperer, deliberately exploits the linguistic »magic« and illocutionary force of individual names and collective singulars. This seems also the reason why it was able to develop such a strong linguistic aftermath in everyday German language (thesis 3). The article concludes with a brief survey of past and present discussions on the possible proper names for the »event« of the murder of the European Jews itself. It regards the undecidedness between proper name and namelessness as not an inappropriate expression of the historical events for which the metonymical names »Auschwitz«, »Holocaust«, »Shoah«, and »Churban« stand (thesis 4).