"Jedem das Seine" (German pronunciation: [ˈjeːdm̩ das ˈzaɪ̯nə] ) is the literal German translation of the Latin phrase suum cuique , meaning "to each his own" or "to each what he deserves".
During World War II the phrase was cynically used by the Nazis as a motto displayed over the entrance of Buchenwald concentration camp. This has resulted in use of the phrase being considered controversial in modern Germany.
Jedem das Seine has been an idiomatic German expression for several centuries. For example, it is found in the works of Martin Luther and contemporaries. [1]
It appears in the title of a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, Nur jedem das Seine (BWV 163), first performed at Weimar in 1715. [2]
Some nineteenth-century comedies bear the title Jedem das Seine, including works by Johann Friedrich Rochlitz [3] and Caroline Bernstein. [4]
An ironic twist on the proverb, "jedem das Seine, mir das Meiste" ("to each his own, to me the most"), has been known in the reservoir of German idioms for a long time, including its inclusion in Carl Zuckmayer's 1931 play The Captain of Köpenick .
In 1937, the Nazis constructed the Buchenwald concentration camp, 7 km from Weimar, Germany. The motto Jedem das Seine was placed in the camp's main entrance gate. The gates were designed by Franz Ehrlich, a former student of the Bauhaus art school, who had been imprisoned in the camp because he was a communist. [5] [6]
Several modern advertising campaigns in the German language, including ads for Nokia, REWE grocery stores, Burger King, and Merkur Bank, have been marred by controversy after using the phrase Jedem das Seine or Jedem den Seinen.
An ExxonMobil ad campaign in January 2009 touted Tchibo coffee drinks at the company's Esso stores with the slogan Jedem den Seinen!. The ads were withdrawn after protest from the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and a company spokesman said its advertising contractor had been unaware of the proverb's association with Nazism. [7]
In March 2009, a student group associated with the Christian Democratic Union used the slogan for an education campaign in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), but later withdrew it due to public outcry. [8]
In May 2018, Peek & Cloppenburg started a campaign using the motto and defended its use publicly after much criticism. [9]
Arbeit macht frei is a German phrase meaning "Work sets you free" or "Work makes one free". The slogan is known for appearing on the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.
Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately 80 kilometres southwest of Leipzig, 170 kilometres north of Nuremberg and 170 kilometres west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouring cities of Erfurt and Jena, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia, with approximately 500,000 inhabitants. The city itself has a population of 65,000. Weimar is well known because of its large cultural heritage and its importance in German history.
Buchenwald was a Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees.
Aufseherin[ˈaʊ̯fˌzeːəʁɪn] was the position title for a female guard in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Of the 50,000 guards who served in Nazi concentration camps, about 5,000 were women. In 1942, the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbrück. The year after, the Nazis began conscripting women because of a shortage of male guards. In the context of these camps, the German position title of Aufseherin translates to (female) "overseer" or "attendant". Later female guards were dispersed to Bolzano (1944–1945), Kaiserwald-Riga (1943–44), Mauthausen, Stutthof (1942–1945), Vaivara (1943–1944), Vught (1943–1944), and at Nazi concentration camps, subcamps, work camps, detention camps and other posts.
This is a list of words, terms, concepts and slogans of Nazi Germany used in the historiography covering the Nazi regime. Some words were coined by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi Party members. Other words and concepts were borrowed and appropriated, and other terms were already in use during the Weimar Republic. Finally, some are taken from Germany's cultural tradition.
Paul Robert Schneider was a German pastor of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union who was the first Protestant minister to be martyred by the Nazis. He was murdered with a strophanthin injection at the concentration camp of Buchenwald.
Karl Gottlieb von Windisch was a Hungarian German writer who produced a series of letters that were published as "Briefe über den Schachspieler von Kempelen nebst drey Kupferstichen die diese berühmte Maschine vorstellen", translated as "Inanimate Reason; or a Circumstantial Account of That Astonishing Piece of Mechanism, M. de Kempelen's Chess-Player; Now Exhibiting at No. 9 Savile-Row, Burlington Gardens", following a series of performances of The Turk that he attended. The letters have been cited often since their publication in attempts to uncover the secret of the machine. Windisch spoke Slovak and Hungarian and was the first publisher of an academic Journal in Eastern Europe.
"Suum cuique", or "Unicuique suum", is a Latin phrase often translated as "to each his own" or "may all get their due". It has been significant in the history of philosophy and as a motto.
Franz Ehrlich was a German architect, calligrapher and graphic designer. He was a student at the Bauhaus in Dessau from 1927 to 1930. Ehrlich was a Communist and was arrested and imprisoned by the Nazi regime in 1935.
J. A. Topf and Sons was an engineering company, founded in 1878 in Erfurt, Germany by Johannes Andreas Topf (1816–1891). Originally, it made heating systems and brewing and malting equipment. Later, the company diversified into silos, chimneys, incinerators for burning municipal waste, and crematoria. During World War I it made weapons shells, limbers and other military vehicles. In World War II it also made weapons shells and aircraft parts for the Luftwaffe.
The Buchenwald Resistance was a resistance group of prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp. It involved Communists, Social Democrats, and people affiliated with other political parties, unaffiliated people, and both Jews and Christians. Because Buchenwald prisoners came from a number of countries, the Resistance was also international. Members tried to sabotage Nazi efforts where they could, worked to save the lives of child inmates, and in the last days of the camp, with many Nazis fleeing the approaching allied troops, tried to gain control of the camp itself. After liberation, the prisoners documented their experiences on paper and formed an international committee to look after the welfare of survivors.
Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel was a French-German writer and translator from the Pfeffel family. His texts were put to music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn and Franz Schubert. He is sometimes also known as Amédée or Théophile Conrad Pfeffel, which is the French translation of Gottlieb ("Godlove").
Subcamps, also translated as satellite camps, were outlying detention centres (Haftstätten) that came under the command of a main concentration camp run by the SS in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The Nazis distinguished between the main camps and the subcamps subordinated to them. Survival conditions in the subcamps were, in many cases, poorer for the prisoners than those in the main camps.
Goethe Oak, is a name given to a number of oak trees in Germany that are referred to in this way because they allegedly bear some sort of connection to the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
"Never again" is a phrase or slogan which is associated with the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides. The phrase may originate from a 1927 poem by Yitzhak Lamdan which stated "Never again shall Masada fall!" In the context of genocide, the slogan was used by liberated prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp to express anti-fascist sentiment. The exact meaning of the phrase is debated, including whether it should be used as a particularistic command to avert a second Holocaust of Jews or whether it is a universalist injunction to prevent all forms of genocide.
Johann Gottfried Dyck (also: Johann Gottfried Dik, Johannes Gottfried Dyck, Johann Gottfried Dyk; was a German bookseller and author.
Johann Heinrich Friedrich Müller was a German actor, writer and Lustspiel poet.
The Dachau camp trial was the first mass trial of the Dachau trials, a series of trials against war criminals held by the United States Army on the premises of the Dachau concentration camp. The main trial took place from 15 November to 13 December 1945. Forty people were charged with war crimes in connection with the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps. The trial ended with 40 convictions, including 36 death sentences, of which 28 were carried out. The official name of the case was United States of America vs. Martin Gottfried Weiss et al. - Case 000-50-2. The main trial served as a "parent case" for 123 subsequent cases. In the subsequent trials, all crimes that were established in the main trial were taken as proven, significantly shortening their duration relative to the parent case. The Dachau trials consisted of 6 total parent trials, each with their own subcases, and were held between 1945 and 1948. In total, there were 489 Dachau trials, of which 394 were held within the confines of the camp itself.
Benedikt David Arnstein, also known by the pen name Arenhof, was an Austrian playwright. He is considered the first German-language Jewish dramatist and poet.