Messages of the obersturmführer metaphor recalled by Victor Klemperer in the book „LTI. Philological Notebook”

Abstract

The content of the article is an analysis of a moving quote from V. Klemperer’s book „LTI. A philologist’s notebook.” The author, an outstanding philologist of Jewish origin, analyzes Lingua Tertii Imperii – the language of the Third Reich, the times of the NSDAP rule, in which he lived. The selected quote presents an authentic everyday situation with a metaphorical, hidden meaning and message. Inquiring into the meaning and meaning of the cited event involves linguistic and semantic analysis based on the so-called Kenneth Burke's pentad, but equally theological and exegetical. The presented investigations do not constitute a closed and complete interpretative answer. They pose a number of questions that engage the reader in the discourse on the meaning of the message. In this understanding, the text assumes the intellectual cooperation of the reader.