Saturday, September 17, 2005
Last night I rode the bus to Stammtisch, which is the bi-weekly German Club/faculty/student get-together thingy at a "downtown" bar ("downtown" would not be in quotes if I considered Lubbock a real city). I saw Eike and asked him the question which had been plaguing my little mind since the night before last, namely, "Was ist einer Kurfürst?" I knew "der Fürst" meant "prince", but the text I was reading für meine Kulturkurs mentioned "der Kurfürst Friedrich der Weise", which I found nowhere.
Eike cleared the matter by explaining that a Kurfürst was elected (before and during the Reformation period) by certain nobles, or something, as a bishop sort of position. Heredity played a role as well, somehow, but it was not the only requisite. An online dictionary translated the word into English as "elector", which Eike said is correct, but does not connotate for me anything related to the Catholic church and politics, for obviously in twentieth-century America the two do not quite meld.
Berna, the Turkish-German graduate student who taught the first semester German class I took this summer, told me excitedly about a conference she applied for taking place in January. She is worried she may not receive funding, though, for she graduates in December. I sympathized, sharing the tale of this whole aqueduct research fiasco. Her papers would be about journalistic language in Spanish, German, and American newspapers after September 11, 2001- studying the rhetoric used in times of crisis, ich glaube. Das ist sehr interessant, und vielleicht hat viel Arbeit gemacht. Es wurde saugt, wenn sie nicht gehen kann.
Ich muss jetzt zur Arbeit gehen. Es saught.
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 9:03 AM]