Liliputins in German -5470

Ich verbitte mir, mich nachgedunkelter Schrumpfgermane und Humpelstilzchen zu nennen ...
Joseph Goebbels


Liliputinss. What, the heck, is this?
http://stihi.ru/2021/11/24/7101

Goebbels got infected with Osteomyelitis in his childhood (he was four), which lead to him developing a clubed right foot [His diaries have an entrance saying that he remembers having a long walk with his parents and for the first time having incredible pain when he was a child, maybe his clearest childhood memory]. It wasn't a genetic deficiency, it was aquired.

By the time he meets Hitler, he was a failed author, a failed journalist, a faithless socialist, poor, confused by the "chaos of the times" (his own words), a doctorate of Germanistik (German philology), working for a bank (whose soulless materialism he resented) and waiting for "a strong genius" which could renew Germany (and his life, presumably) [This fixation on geniuses has some tradition in Germany, especially in literature (think Faust)].

As we know, he met this "strong genius" in Hitler. Goebbels was immensely talented and hard working. Sometimes, however, when Goebbels felt himself rejected, he gets rather envious. His diaries, when Hitler didn't do as much as Goebbels liked about the Strasser brothers, are rather vitriolic. Another time when Goebbels swears to stop working for Hitler is when he is dissapointed that the "morphine addict", "the fat pig" G;ring is made Prime Minister of Prussia instead of Goebbels.

In a way, the disability of Goebbels wasn't so bad for the Nazis. He certainly could do his share of the work (as oppossed to the Erbkranken or Geisteskranken of the Nazi pamphlets) and there was no chance that he would spread his "corruption" through his offspring. Goebbels' children and Magda (Quandt) famously were the ideal picture of all a German family should be, at least in his propaganda.

This doesn't save Goebbels from ridicule, however. Some of his enemies have called him rather pointedly nachgedunkelter Schrumpfgermane (= darkened shrink german) or Humpelstilzchen (= limp -elstilzchen, after Rumpelstiltskin, which is called Rumpelstizchen in German).

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Bock von Babelsberg