A passage from LIFE magazine of Sept. 14, 1953, courtesy Futility Closet:
Inspired officials of the East German Communist party, ever diligent in setting standards to which party members may conform, issued a list of the terms which are approved for use in vilifying the West. Henceforth Red speakers will know they are on safe ground if they choose any of the following synonyms for Americans: ‘Monkey killers, lice breeders, mass poisoners, chewing-gum spivs, boogie-woogie tramps, gas-chamber ideologists, leprous heroes, breeders of trichinosis, arsenic mixers, delirious lunatics, exploiters of epidemics.’ For the British a different set of terms must be used: ‘paralytic sycophants, effete betrayers of humanity, carrion-eating servile imitators, arch cowards and collaborators, conceited dandies or playboy soldiers.’
One cannot, of course, count on the scholarly bona fides of LIFE magazine, and for all I know the whole thing was a Cold War invention, but it’s certainly lively reading. Thanks, JC!
That “spiv” is a markedly BrEng word absent from the AmEng lexicon seems odd, but of course it’s not implausible for Communist bureaucrats to make comical errors. Or is it more likely that the list of approved vituperative terms was promulgated in German and then translated into English by someone (possibly even in the employ of a Western journalist rather than the DDR authorities?) who cluelessly used BrEng rather than AmEng lexemes to translate slurs on the American list?
Has anyone come across a study about the rhetoric used during the Cold War in the press and in Congress to describe the commies on the other side of the Iron Curtain?
This particular kind of vilification by name-calling was often practiced by fanatical communists. Even as a child I noticed “running dogs of capitalism” – though I still don’t know what running dogs is supposed to mean. Stray dogs in packs chasing scraps of mobile garbage ? I always think: a dog may run, a cat may look at a king.
The sheer quantity of the name-calling was remarkable, and also the fact the names were generic, not assigned to individuals. “Pocohontas” and “little rocket man” are merely examples of specific name-calling.
There’s a high-tone version nowadays used by some fanatical non-communists, involving words like “hegemonic”, “cis”-fill-in-the-blank. Unregenerate patriarchal cis-terns.
Vilification by generalization is what it is. Only the wordy inventiveness distinguishes it from “cunts”. As Aristotle didn’t say – to assign the genus is to give the reason.
Wikipedia covers “running dog” well:
“Lap dog” would be a more idiomatic English equivalent.
Using “gas-chamber ideologists” is clearly an attempt to tar the West as facist, which was common in Soviet times. For example, the official name of the Berlin Wall was the “Antifaschistischer Schutzwall.” (“Anti-facist protection rampart” was, I believe, the official English translation.)
My high school German classroom (which had been occupied by Mr. Chapman since the school had opened, decades earlier), had one wall given over to a student-painted mural. The most salient feature of the mural was an image of the Berlin Wall, as it looked from the West Berlin side, complete with graffiti. In huge letters, it said, “DIE MAUER MUSS WEG!” However, I went to high school in the 1990s, and a huge hole had been painted into the wall; “Die Mauer fällt, 1989.”
Cisgender is no more derogatory than heterosexual, and is equally useful.
‘Running dog’ is the literal translation of the Chinese word meaning ‘lackey’ (in the derogatory, not the neutral, sense).
Depends on how the word is used. Among gay men, the term “heterosexual” can be derogatory or intoxicating.
# Stealth transmen, then, end up looking similar to heterosexual, cisgender men — and different from open transmen. # [Kristen Shilt, Just One of the Guys ?]
So “running dog” means a person who runs errands on command, like a dog ordered to run after a stick ?
I like “paralytic sycophant”, and may indeed adopt it as a self-designation.
There’s a high-tone version nowadays used by some fanatical non-communists, involving words like “hegemonic”
Surely “hegemonic” is used by communists as well, and indeed quite frequently if I remember my exposure to political abuse-flinging correctly. (“Hegemonic imperialism” gets extra points.)
Indeed yes: the word conjures up Gramsci in particular, who meant something quite specific by it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony
That “spiv” is a markedly BrEng word absent from the AmEng lexicon seems odd
Not necessarily. The lexicon might not be intended for use to an American audience; if you wanted to insult Americans while talking to Brits, “spiv” would work very well.
More likely, though, that as you say this is a translation of a list of German insults intended to be used in domestic propaganda. The article has no context; Hat has posted the complete piece. There are some other loose translations in it: the ruling party of the GDR was not the Communist Party but the Socialist Unity Party, for example.
“Playboy soldiers” sounds rather good. I am confident that, at the very least, the Hussar regiments wouldn’t have minded that at all.
This particular kind of vilification by name-calling was often practiced by fanatical communists.
China, not a polite nation in general, really went to town on Chris Patten, if I remember: “sinner for a thousand years”, “prostitute”, “tango dancer”, “snake”, “triple violator” and so on.
Looking at Gramsci’s Wikipedia page, I see that his odd surname was ultimately Albanian. Makes him the (honorary) third of the Memorable Albanians, the other two being Mother Teresa (inevitably) and Enver Hoxha (for the spelling.)
Beats Belgium. There are only two Memorable Belgians, and they are both fictional.
I’ll be damned — the name is from Gramsh, in central Albania. Thanks much for that!
Stu,
“Depends on how the word is used. Among gay men, the term “heterosexual” can be derogatory or intoxicating. ”
Actually, no. The derogatory term for that is actually “breeder”, which in turns sounds like a slur the Sierra Club would have thought up.
And there’s nothing intoxicating about heterosexual men. Straight looking for gay sex are a dime a dozen.
Speaking of Communists, I think it’s a shame that the Wiki page on Peniche makes no mention of this:
Arrested in 1949, he remained in prison until he made a spectacular escape from the Peniche prison in 1960. This escape had a wide impact. The government of António Salazar claimed that a Soviet submarine was near the Peniche coast waiting for Cunhal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peniche,_Portugal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81lvaro_Cunhal
Could anyone add it?
Idly clicking Wikipedia links (must stop doing that) I discover that Jennifer Aniston is one-eighth Italo-Albanian. I foresee one of those ineffably irritating pub quiz questions:
What links: Mother Teresa, Antonio Gramsci and Jennifer Aniston?
Possibly a bit obscure …
Ahem. If one is getting into the diaspora, surely pride of place ought to be given to that great Albanian-American John Belushi, whose father had emigrated to the New World from the impressively-named village of Qytezë. Although I’m thinking maybe Albanian scrabble doesn’t give so much credit for Q’s and Z’s as Anglophone scrabble does?
If one is getting into the diaspora, surely pride of place ought to be given to that great Albanian-American John Belushi
It certainly should! But now I’m wondering about the origin of the surname Belushi. Wikipedia doesn’t say; anybody know?
Were these insults intended to be directed at Americans and Brits by East Germans? Because I can only image them causing bemusement and hilarity. Arsenic mixers? Breeders of trichinosis?
Or were they meant to instill distrust of the West strictly among the East Germans? I like to think of an East German father, over breakfast, saying to his children, you must never trust Americans, they mix arsenic and breed trichinosis.
Not to mention, of course, that your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries.
FWIW, there are several historical strata of distinctly BrEng lexemes in my own lexicon (typically passive lexicon, i.e. I understand them but would feel ridiculous using them in most contexts). The first stratum was acquired in earlier childhood from BrEng children’s books: Paddington, Swallows & Amazons, what have you. I think I probably first encountered “spiv” in the second stratum, which was acquired via listening to the lyrics of British-origin rock songs from the age of 13 forward. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm7aQ9tW5Vw
Is a flow-on effect purely Australasian?
Although Hergé was Belgian, I’m not sure there’s anything in Tintin that would clearly locate him there.
Also, I’d like to take offence on Jacques Brel’s behalf.
I admit I had no idea Jacques Brel was Belgian, and I probably won’t remember five minutes from now, so although he is clearly Memorable, I’m not sure he’s a Memorable Belgian.
The same goes for Audrey Hepburn (born Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston in Brussels). Toots Thielemans, on the other hand, qualifies, at least to me.
@ J.W. Brewer The first stratum was acquired in earlier childhood from BrEng children’s books
At about age 7 I pulled out one of my mother’s books and was shocked to find “Mr” and “Mrs” without periods after them. I knew that was wrong and I refused to read it! I don’t know what book it was, but I’m afraid I may have deprived myself of The Phoenix and the Carpet. My old shame.
the second stratum, which was acquired via listening to the lyrics of British-origin rock songs
Co-signed. “Day tripper”, “brass in pocket”, “caravans that never move from their front gardens” are passive lexicon only.
Belushi’s Albanian Wikipedia page says something about the name being recorded at the time of the family’s immigration as Bellios or Belliors.
Also in the class of famous people not widely known to be Belgian: Georges Simenon
Now “Belliors” looks plausibly like it ought to be a Walloon surname, even if it isn’t …
Well, maybe so, but he didn’t exactly hide his Belgian-ness under a bushel, with songs like “Bruxelles”, “Les flamandes”, “Knokke-le Zoute tango”, “Les Flamingants”, even “Le plat pays”. “Marieke” is half in Flemish, there are various references to things like La Grand Place and moules-frites, and I think he adopts a strong Belgian accent in Les bonbons. I’m pretty sure he’s memorably Belgian to a francophone audience.
I’m pretty sure he’s memorably Belgian to a francophone audience.
Oh, I’m sure he is; I can speak only for myself and my own lamentable ignorance.
>There are only two Memorable Belgians, and they are both fictional.
If not Leopold, surely Leopold’s Ghost is memorable. In which case, fictionality depends on whether you believe in ghosts.
If random genealogical info googled up on websites of unknown provenance is taken to be reliable, it looks as though Greek nationalists with an irredentist interest in “Northern Epirus” may also have a claim on Belushi: “John’s maternal grandparents were Demetri George Samaras and Anna D. Popa/Papajoseph. Demetri was born in Korçë, now in Albania. Anna was born in Greece or Albania. Demetri and Anna spoke Greek, but it is not clear if they were ethnic Greeks, or if they identified as such. They are usually described in biographical sources on the Belushis as Albanian.” Their daughter Agnes, Belushi’s mother, is said by the same source to have been born in Akron, Ohio (whose name is said by wikipedia to have a Greek etymology but does not derive from Greek immigration but rather by inference from what WASPy land speculators with a smattering of classical learning thought would sound classy circa 1820).
One of the funniest names in history (IMHO) belongs to the otherwise utterly forgettable Belgian politician Annemie Turtelboom.
Leopold is merely notorious, not Memorable.
I did know about Brel, but was working on the principle that famous Belgians (as opposed to Memorable) are ipso facto French. As with Canadians and Americans.
I’d forgotten about Simenon. QED.
Belushi, now … 4 – 2 to Albania!
1-Among famous Albanians in the diaspora the actress Eliza Dushku surely ought to be mentioned (I am, admittedly, a big fan of Joss Whedon’s).
2-To this francophone Jacques Brel is undeniably Belgian, but on the basis of the content of some of his songs even francophones could be forgiven for believing him to be French: In his fine song ROSA- (which was discussed five years ago right here at Casa Hat: http://languagehat.com/der-beste-in-latein/
-he refers to the pupils who will make up “La France de demain”, and when I first heard it I assumed he was French.
I thought Muhammad Ali was the most memorable Albanian.
Belushi’s grandfather was recorded in his US immigration papers as Anastassios Vellousi. In his petition for naturalization his name appears as Anastas Adam Beloushi. His naturalization record gives his family name as “Veloussi (Beloushi) Belliori (Belliouri)”. His WW2 draft card spells his name as “Belouski”, which figures for Chicago.
Was having a Greek-appearing name a disadvantage at the time?
I only know about Eliza Dushku because her uncommon name once led me to look up her biography. The same goes for Embeth Davidtz.
Talking of Eliza Dushku (and why not?) brings to mind the excellent Enver Gjokaj, effortless winner in the American-actor-with-best-in-yer-face-Albanian-name stakes.
Middle name: Leif. Only in America …
David Eddyshaw: Excellent indeed: On the basis of his performance in DOLLHOUSE, Enver Gjokaj would deserve to be a better-known actor, of any origin/ethnicity/nationality…
In “Astérix chez les Belges” each Belge speaks of “le plat pays qui est le mien”.
England’s first defeat at FIFA World Cup 2018 came from a goal score by Adnan Januzaj, perhaps the most famous Belgian Albanian.
@Etienne:
I agree. A performance so good as to be positively eerie at times.
The Phoenix and the Carpet
My wife missed it too, so I’m reading it out loud to her now, preceded by Five Children and It and to be followed by The Story of the Amulet and the modern sequel Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders. (I’ve never read the last and I’m looking forward to it.) The first three are all available at Project Gutenberg.
There are only two Memorable Belgians, and they are both fictional.
This is presumably in the same vein as ‘The Swiss haven’t fought a war for centuries, and that’s produced only cuckoo-clocks/stringy cheese/yodelling'(?)
Off the top of my head (because to look it up wouldn’t make anybody sufficiently memorable)
Saint-Saens
Eddie Merxx (racing cyclist, won the Tour de France several times)
And because I haven’t looked them up, I couldn’t be sure of the spelling.
Remember Belgium has only been a country since the Napoleonic wars.
The IPA and “English pronunciation respellings” on Enver Gjokaj’s WP page give conflicting pronunciations, trochees in the former and iambs in the latter. Anyone know which is correct?
Here’s a list of additional Famous Belgians, some of whom predate Belgium: Charles V, Mercator, Rubens, Sax (of the saxophone), Maeterlinck, Lemaitre, Django Reinhart, Magritte, Diane von Fürstenberg, Stromae. The immense list at Wikipedia, including in its list of fictional characters Dr. Evil.
How could I have omitted Dr Evil? (A worthy adversary for the other Memorable Belgians, it must be said.)
OK. Albania 4; Belgium, 3.
The others are famous Belgians, and thus Memorable Frenchmen (even when Flemish.) See on Jacques Brel, above. The umpire’s decision is final.
I unaccountably omitted ex-king Zog.
5 – 3.
And ex-King Farouk of Egypt. And Gjergj Kastrioti, who held back the Turks.
No, they are famous rather than Memorable. There are far too many famous Albanians to remember. Belgians, too, I dare say.
It occurs to me that I should perhaps explain my technical terminology for the benefit of those who are neither cis-Atlantic nor cis-Manchic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That
In the infamously rather racist (and thus infrequently reprinted, at the author’s own request) Tintin in the Congo, Tintin was shown teaching the inhabitants of the Belgian Congo about their Belgian “motherland.” It was only the third Tintin book Herge did, and when it was reprinted in color, he redrew the panel to make it somewhat less offensive (before he ultimately decide that the Tintin in the Congo was too flawed to be fixed by such minor touch-ups).
Moreover, a character inspired by King Zog actually showed up in the Tintin series: King Muskar XII of Syldavia.
On the other hand, King Farouk was far more French than he was Albanian. His great-great-grandfather, Muhammad Ali Pasha, appears to be the only source of Albanian ancestry in his family tree.
JC: Famous Belgians, some of whom predate Belgium: Charles V, …
What makes Charles V Belgian (more particularly Flemish ?) rather than Austrian, Spanish, etc?
The updated version of the panels from Tintin au Congo that Brett links to is actually worse than the original in terms of offensiveness, I’d say. The original is at least a little reminiscent of the French colonial idea (at its best) that genetics has nothing to do with Frenchness, so there is nothing problematic or paradoxical about the idea that one might be a black Frenchman; the update implies that school-age Africans might be unable to add two and two. Hergé was right: it’s not really redeemable. Credit to him for seeing it.
Milou does not come out well of these strips … I have to say he shows stereotypical fox terrier attitudes.
What makes Charles V Belgian (more particularly Flemish ?) rather than Austrian, Spanish, etc?
He was born in Ghent, which was and is in Flanders.
Salvatore Adamo, Tombe La Niege
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCyUST1vGU4
He was born in Ghent, which was and is in Flanders.
Does that make John of Gaunt a Memorable Belgian, then?
since the Napoleonic wars
Actually, even later – Belgium seceded from the Netherlands in 1830, when Nappy was already dead for almost a decade.
le plat pays qui est le mien
I always planned to finally read Asterix in French. I really have to get around to that now.
Hergé was not alone. French B.D. was and still is Belgian to a large degree. From the top of my head and in rough chronological order there’s Franquin (Spirou et Fantasio, Gaston Lagaffe), Morris (Lucky Luke), Peyo (the Smurfs), van Hamme (e.g. Thorgal), Hermann (e.g. Jeremiah), Schuiten (les Cités Obscures), Yslaire (Sambre). Also several of the publishers were Belgian.
Merxx — that’s Baron Merckxs here at the Hattery.
John Belushi definitely spoke Greek–remember the “chizzboiga” sketches; the question might be whether he spoke Albanian.
And Belgium may only have been Belgium since 1830, but as a distinct piece of territory it dates back to the 15th century as the Burgundian Netherlands.
Albania has only been Albania since 1912, come to that.
From Dovlatov’s Affiliate: editor on Radio Freedom instructs him (protagonists, but as usual close to the author) how not to write
“Don’t write that Moscow is feverishly brandishes their weapons. That Kremlin gerontocrats keep their sclerotic finger…”
I interrupted him: “… on the trigger of war?”
“How do you know?”
“I was writing it for ten years in Soviet newspapers”
“About Kremlin gerontocrats?”
“No, about Pentagon hawks”
Memorable Belgians: how about Louis Dollo?
Memorable wannabe Albanians: this guy, who tried to become king there.
Merckx. That kind of spelling forms a pattern with Hendrickx and, on the other side of the border, the abovementioned Davidtz. Shame that Richarz makes do without a t.
-To this francophone Jacques Brel is undeniably Belgian, but on the basis of the content of some of his songs even francophones could be forgiven for believing him to be French:
The innertubes fed me this delightful rendition of a Brel song.
Here it is by Brel, with translation. (wikip alleges it’s one of his most famous. Is that amongst a French/Belgian audience?)
The language-y question: what is “flons flons”/”flonflons”?
That video gives ‘modern music’. But even by 1968 neither valse musette nor l’accordéon would count as modern.
I think there’s a lot more going on; and no dictionary to hand will divulge. It’s more like ‘flim-flam’?
It is a nice version, I agree. (I also like the plug for the album, which gets engagingly surreal.)
Says WP: “Brel is the third-best-selling Belgian recording artist of all time.”
There is something so satisfyingly Belgian about that sentence.
The language-y question: what is “flons flons”/”flonflons”?
My ancient Concise Oxford gives “flonflon Tol-de-rol; vulgar noisy music.”
Tol-de-rol; vulgar noisy music.
Ah, thank you. That makes a lot more sense. Consistent with the (chauffe, chauffe, chauffe) … (chauffez les gars) to the band as the song gets to its climax.
Typically laconic (L’ombre de ton chien) and self-deprecatory.
third-best-selling Belgian recording artist of all time
Ha ha, at that link “The best-selling Belgian music artists cannot be listed officially, as there is no organization that has recorded global music sales of Belgian artists.” Belgianity upon Belginanity.
I have to concede that on that list, Brel is the only one I recognise. The top two spots are of course not real Belgians but both (unusually) Italian.
Belginanity
I don’t know whether that was intended or a typo, but I’m gonna use it if I ever need to taunt Belgians.
@AntC: The top two spots are of course not real Belgians but both (unusually) Italian.
Well, they were toddlers when they came to Belgium, so I’d say they still count. I never heard of Frédéric François before, but Adamo was fairly popular in the 70s and German versions of his chansons, sung by himself, made it into the German charts. I guess this is his most famous song; maybe you even know it, just weren’t aware of the singer’s name.
maybe you even know [Adamo],
I fear not: 1963 was before I discovered anything foreign. I know Brel chiefly because of Ne me quitte pas, but not as of 1959 nor even of the Nina Simone version in 1965 but from the 1970’s ‘British invasion’/If you go away Dusty Springfield, Shirley Bassey, Sandie Shaw — who I now realise has an excruciatingly bad French accent.
Purely in the interests of science I did listen to a 1977 track from number 4 on the list ‘Plastic Bertrand’. Kinda like Garry Glitter but in French — which gave it a little cachet.
Belginanity I suspect would only work with the sort of sniffy Brits who lurk in the Hattery. But I’m happy to collect any royalties.
I wasn’t even born in 1963, but French chansons were still played a lot on German radio in the early 70s when I was a kid. I also frequently listened to oldie shows, and my taste in music ended up preferring stuff from the 60s and early 70s to most of what was popular during my teenage years.
Hey, “Ça Plane Pour Moi” is a terrific song! OK, it’s not “Anarchy in the UK” or “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais,” but who can resist that “Ouh-ouh-ouh-ouh”?
WP quotes Joe Strummer (no less) on the song:
“Plastic Bertrand compressed into that three minutes a bloody good record that will get any comatose person toe-tapping, you know what I mean? By purist rules, it’s not allowed to even mention Plastic Bertrand. Yet, this record was probably a lot better than a lot of so-called punk records.”
Joe knows!
It’s not that I hated or totally disregarded 80s music, I just wasn’t into it as much as into the older stuff and much less than one would expect based on my age. Over the years, I’ve started to appreciate a lot of music from that time more, probably helped by the fact that I was exposed to it via radio, parties, etc., and now it triggers nostalgia. That said, while I like individual punk songs, I never was attracted by the genre as such and its attitude of “fuck the world and especially the establishment”; I never was a rebellious person.
But I agree that “Ça plane” is a great piece with a lot of energy.
Plastic Bertrand might have been even better with Flemish lyrics, but you take what you can get.
The best selling Belgian artists in the USA have to be Jo Bogaert and Ya Kid K, known of course as Technotronic. I’m quite sure no American has ever assumed the authors of “Pump Up the Jam” are French, although the number of Americans who could identify them as “Belgian” is probably in the double digits at best.
Yesterday I quoted Chloe Aridjis on the topic of Savoyards and their marmots; now I have to quote her again:
Belgians everywhere you look! (This one was apparently actually named Étienne-Gaspard Robert.)
It seems rather anachronistic to call É-G Robert “Belgian,” since “Belgium” didn’t even become a thing until the very end of his life, almost four decades after he’d relocated to Paris. Would people in the 1770’s or 1780’s have described him as having a nationality-or-equivalent (I’ll even settle for an “ethnicity”) other than Liégeois? If so, what?
Well, sure, it’s anachronistic, but if you’re strict about both geography and chronology, how many Belgians are there, really?
how many Belgians are there, really?
Allegiance to a state impossible to tell.
https://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/pinsky/impossible_to_tell.php
A nice poem, and definite LH material (“And danced around the body, chanting and praying/ In Hebrew, then Yiddish, then Aramaic. He prayed/ In Turkish and Egyptian and Old Galician…”).
Regardless of whether they may have preferred to self-identify as Fleming or Walloon or whanot, there have been since 1830 many millions of people who seem pretty unambiguously Belgian, in the sense of “held a Belgian passport (or was entitled to) and lived within the internationally-recognized borders of Belgium.” Not so many before 1830. I don’t know to what extent and in what contexts pre-1789 the denizens of the Prince-Bishopric of Liege were lumped in by others with those of the Austrian Netherlands or even the Walloon subset thereof. They really only form an apparently “natural kind” if you think about nationality and ethnicity in a way that was not yet universal in Europe before 1789. The Prince-Bishop in charge when the Revolution (there was a local spin-off of the Paris-based franchise) arrived was a right reverend fellow named César-Constantin-François de Hoensbroeck. So French given names and a Dutch (modulo the preposition) family name, but wikipedia calls him a “German ecclesiastic.”
Unrelatedly, “flonflon” reminds me of the Canadian toponym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flin_Flon, home town of the legendary Captain Bobby Clarke, whosee alleged etymology is pretty wacky.
wikipedia calls him a “German ecclesiastic
Well, formally, before the French revolutionary wars, the area was part of the Holy Roman Empire, aka Germany. I remember readng Johnson calling Spa (part of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège) a “town in Germany”, so identifying the area as German wouldn’t have seen outlandish to people at the time.
The painter Paul Daxhelet was Belgian, not Albanian. The painter Fernand Khnopff was Belgian. They do like their aitches, and digraphs and trigraphs in general.
The chemist Franz von Soxhlet was, however, neither Belgian nor Albanian.
Johnson calling Spa
He was there for the skydiving?
Some of the polemical terms from the _Life_ article are apparently also found in a 1955 book by Harry Hodgkinson (1913-1994) entitled _Doubletalk: The Language of Communism_. I don’t know if Hodgkinson had a source better than _Life_ or not, but similarly don’t know if (were snippet view sidestepped) he gives a clue as to where to find the original German. Hodgkinson (shurely this cannot be a coincidence) also fits an earlier theme of this thread as a biographer of Scanderbeg and “from 1985 Chairman of the Anglo-Albanian Association.”
@jwb
https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/amikafer.htm
You might like this–sort of a biotrail predating the current chemtrails evilly crisscrossing our skies..
“The chemist Franz von Soxhlet was, however, neither Belgian nor Albanian.”
His father, however, Hubert Soxhlet, was born and raised in Dalhem, which in his day was part of the Duchy of Brabant and is now in Belgium.