'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

I'll see your history degree and raise you an MA in historical linguistics and Germanic philology. And what follows is not "spouting" but evidence, something your post seems devoid of.

Reich is Old High German rihhi which meant "kingdom, realm", as in Gott im Himmelreich, God in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is cognate with Old English rice which turns up in Modern English archaically as reach, which means someone's realm, ambit or scope. Cognate also is Latin rex, king.

The term "Holy Roman Empire" (Sacrum Romanum Imperium) was hyperbole. As Voltaire pointed out, "This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire". Actually translating imperium as Reich here makes the German more accurate than the Latin: it was not an empire at all but at best a region under some sort of common jurisdiction.

If you're still in doubt consider the following:

das vereinigte Königreich, United Kingdom.
das Himmelreich, the Kingdom of Heaven.
das Tierreich, a kingdom in Linnaeus' taxonomy of speices.

A dictionary may list "empire" among the translations of this word but that has come about through its use by political interests in portraying Germany and its predecessors in a certain light. A region under the rulership of an emperor in the literal sense is der Kaisertum. Alternatively the Latin word may be used; the British Empire was das Britische Imperium.

Oh, and the German Confederation was an entirely different kind of setup to the German Federal Republic; the use of the term Bund in both cases merely refers to the fact that there is an association between the parts (binden, to tie together). The German Confederation was weak and fell apart quickly under pressure; it militated against unity because, like the HRE, it preserved the autonomy and petty squabbling between cities and states; it had no central governance. The Bundesrepublik is the opposite; it has central governance with devolution set out in law and constitution; it is anything but weak (see posts passim); and it has already lasted longer than the Confederation did.

You need to look at the meanings of words in their proper context. The Deutsche Demokratische Repulblik wasn't exactly democratic, was it?

Edited by chateauferret (24 Oct 2018 11.07pm)

Edited by chateauferret (24 Oct 2018 11.09pm)

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The Ferret
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here Chateau, this is a football forum, and impressive though your knowledge is I'm in danger of doing something against all my principles and engaging in competitive tit for tat, something I usually only reserve for Bexleydave (now a mod). Charlemagne was not the first Holy Roman Emperor but he was crowned by the pope as King of the Franks and Lombards who is governing the Roman Empire in 800 AD, in 962 AD after France had become a separate kingdom the remaining Kingdom of Germany and the Italian peninsular were created as the Holy Roman Empire with the Pope's sanction - not sure if Lotheringen was included at this time (Benelux, Burgundy, Swiss, Savoy and Provence - as they now are) but it was an empire back then and then fractured into the entity that was only an empire in name - it's the first manifestation of Germany, the second was the Kaiser's (German for Caesar as you know) and the third was Hitler's - and when Hitler meant Reich I think you'll find he pretty much meant empire - subsequent events would appear to back that up, I'll do Google Translate actually let that be the judge... hold on a tic ...

'Last one in the Reichstag is a sissy'

Well I suppose you could interpret the word by going to University for four years and studying the language and people with the top academics in the subject, or you could just type a single word into a search engine and expect to get the same level of understanding.

If you think you can translate nuanced words in context by looking them up in a free online dictionary then with respect you haven't got the slightest idea what you're talking about.

Oh, and hands up everyone who's ever discussed this question with real, live, talking German people.

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The Ferret
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I disagree with this self reflective egalitarian requirement.

Also from what I can see here a reasonable shorthand description of your degree would be 'a degree in word pedantry'.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)