Demimonde

Demi-monde (French demi - monde ) refers to a " glamorous giving up " and "elegant occurring, but shady, disreputable class of society ." Education Linguistically pejorative it is also known in German as the demimonde.

Word origin

Half the world is a loan translation for ' externally elegant but morally reprehensible social circles ', which is a replica of emerging French demi - monde in the 60s of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 19th century, it is witnessed as a ' world of prostitutes ', but was until 1855 by the comedy " Le Demi- monde " by Alexandre Dumas the Younger in the sense of ' because of a misstep in her class excluded ' popularized. It came in 1856 as a foreign word in German, where it was first translated by half the world.

Meyers Great Conversation Lexicon Demimonde defined in 1906 as:

Imitate " " demi-monde, " a by the same drama of the younger Dumas ( 1855) Come in recording name for the large cities ( especially Paris) is strongly represented class of adventurers higher genus that in uttering the customs and lifestyle of high society (grand monde ) studied; particularly odious and doubtful, but outwardly appearing in all their elegance woman. "

Paul Lindau translated from the preface of the play " Le Demi- monde ", among others, the following definition: "We will find a once and for all for the lexicographers of the future that the demimonde not how it feels and prints, the big pile of Kourtisanen, but only intended to refer to those women, who have fallen out of the good society in the bad ( les déclassées ). Not every who wants there, so part of the demi- monde. This company is in fact entirely of women of good family, who were allowed to operate as a young girl, as women and mothers in the best circles with complete authority and who have made up and away. "In addition, as would George Büchmann than, your fixed principle emphasizes: "> We do, but we do not sell <; and cast them from among their domesticity, as they were ejected from their circles, because they had given away themselves. they belong to the one who pleases them, not those whom they like. "

Literary reception

In Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy is the demimonde a semitolerierte outside the "official" network lying economic and educational society.