People

The term "people" refers to a set of different but partially overlapping groups of people.

Originally designated the word "people", especially a crowd, so many people, just like today 's speech is still in English by "a lot of people". Expressions of the type: "It was a lot of people in attendance. " Be in the German increasingly ungebräuchlicher.

The word 'people' with the addition of "simple" (simple people ), however, still often used. The term refers to the majority of the population of a country as opposed to the prevailing elite.

Since the beginning of modern times is called with the same language and culture, a people generally also a community or large group of people of the same ethnic group. Belonging to a people in addition to objective factors (such as consanguinity, the same language and political community of fate ) and a subjective component in the self- confession to a people. Then have particular Ernest Renan, Gustav Rümelin and Hermann Heller alerted. Thus, many Jews living in Germany have felt before their persecution as German. The conventional concept of the people referred to are not exactly a certain combination of the above characteristics, but has a meaning game space in which none of the objective factors alone decisive, and none at all costs is essential. In this use of the term distinguish between different peoples, the use of the definite article is then usual when of a particular people are talking about (eg of the German people ( e)).

A nation in the sense of state people the other hand consists of the total amount of citizens and their state with equal legal persons, it forms the demos as the basis of democracy. The ethnic origin of citizens of a state is legally irrelevant, while a people may not necessarily have their own state in the ethnic sense in which it is the majority of the population is (→ multiethnic state ). This definition at the time was decisive for the emergence of nation-states with their claim that every resident of the State territory should belong to the civil rights of his " nation."

A rough overview of the peoples of the earth in the ethnic- cultural sense provides the concept of cultural complexes.

Etymology

The term folk (via Middle High German from Old High German volc folc, Fulka from proto-Germanic this " war band " ) is first documented in the 8th century and means " many". This error is due the same Indo-European root word, from the words "full" and "many" can be derived; to the original meaning " warband ", " warrior pile " also includes the Slavic root word pulk - out that's widely regarded as an early borrowing from the Germanic, and has been back later borrowed into German as a pulk with special meaning.

A compound of the word people to Latin vulgus for " crowd " is considered unlikely because the initial sound German f (even if as a v - written) on an Indo- p- due; a root relationship with the Latin word plebs for " crowd" ( "fill" to Latin plēre ), however, is loud historically plausible. A relationship to Latin populus, " people's community " is not proven, but according to historically possible.

A parallel to the importance of the transition from a lot of name for a person collective ( such as " many" to "people" ) can be found in parallel also in the Germanic root word þiuð, which is related to Latin TOT with the meaning "all " (cf. total).

People's notions of the modern era

The various fields of meaning overlap and are both diachronic and synchronic terms of their time reference is not clear against each delineated. Highlight it can be described by the following basic meanings:

The common people and "non- people"

People (Greek οἱ πολλοί, hoi polloi or the Latin populus ) in the sense of " simple people " covers a breadth of meanings of an indeterminate number of people ( " mass [n ]") over the heterogeneous mass of the members of the lower classes (lat. plebs, vulgus ) - here in general with the importance accent of Poverty ( daz poor people ) - to the considered as "the ' real ' underclass', excluded from the medieval and early modern feudal diverse structured " traveling people " ( farende lude, so spellude, Pifer, dromper, speaker unde farende scholer ).

In modern times, the term within the meaning of was " the little people " generalized to " the masses ". This meaning is found in the People's Republic, People's State or People's Party, but also in Volkswagen and folk receiver.

In this meaning of the word "simple" people as opposed to the nobility and elite people of the word is an innumerable Singularetantum. In this particular sense, one can therefore speak only of the nation, but not of a people or even several nations, and nobles, or other members of elites not include as " other people" to, but are linguistically from the category "Folk " in the terms excluded on every country in the world.

A people and other peoples

In contrast to the concept of nation in the historical meaning of " many people " or the even the current meaning of " simple people" can ( " one people" ) and the plural with the following meanings of the word people also in the singular of the indefinite article ( "peoples" ) are used.

State people

People in the sense of state people (Greek δῆμος, demos ) refers irrelevant cultural and ethnic associations to nationals of a subject of international law. This meaning is found in terms such referendum, the people chamber or public property, and in such phrases as the names of the people.

If, as laid down in Article 20 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, the state power " by the people " from, this is called popular sovereignty. Belonging to a nation state created " next to [ ... ] justifying acquisition [n ] by birth [ ... ] in all, open constitutional states ' [ by ] the naturalization law. In particular, the possibility of naturalization ensures that the trend congruence of territory and nation, is maintained. "

Nation

People in the sense of nation is used in political terms such as international law, or the League of Nations. In this sense, it is in the newer social sciences as a construct of the 19th century with considerable effect power.

Ethnicity

In anthropology, the term is sometimes used people parallel to that of ethnicity (Greek ἔθνος ethnos ) in the sense of an ethnic community.

Attempts in the ethnic sense officially define people from outside on their belonging to a "people" are rejected today, mostly in the context of recognition of national minorities. So it says in the German -Danish Convention of 29 March 1955: " The commitment of German ethnic and German culture is free and must not be contested or verified of its own motion. " And the Law on the Rights of the Sorbs in Saxony: "For the Sorbian people heard who is committed to him. The confession is free. It may be neither denied nor verified. For this statement in no way disadvantages may arise. "However, in some post-communist countries, especially in successor states of the Soviet Union, as determined by the nationality of different nationalities in official identity documents. The problem with such methods is that assimilation processes (eg, the Russification of German origin in the diaspora ) are not detected by this method and that people are set on a national identity ( although, for example, according to recent theories of hybridity very well German can be and Sorb ).

In the religious sense, people can, as in the phrases " chosen people " or find "people of God " use. This result is usually strong overlap with sacralized variants of the ethno- cultural and ethno- biological version of the.

In the newer social sciences are now represents the unanimous opinion that the peoples in the sense of ethnic or religious communities constructs, " thought systems " ( Emerich Francis ) and " imagined communities" ( Benedict Anderson ) represent. This does not mean that nations are invented out of nothing, but demarcations from other nations based on existing ideas and react on them and were at the same time as an integration and Legitimationsideologeme of considerable impact and are.

See also: Folk, Ethnic, Folk German, ethnic group, nation of culture, kinship, ethnogenesis

People in the ethnic sense

In the last third of the 19th century folk concepts that took the common biological descent as the basis of the people's concept originated. In the course of social Darwinist ideas of this concept was embedded in racial theories.

This ethnic understanding of the nation as a community of blood was later part of the ideology of National Socialism and under whose rule the policy to a policy that reversed the equality of all citizens before the law, in order to privilege the majority population as " German people's community ". In the Nuremberg Laws, especially in the realm of civil law, these ideas were codified. With the utopia of a " healthy national community " justified the Nazis, discrimination, disenfranchisement and murder of German Jews, "Gypsies ", " antisocial ", " hereditary diseases " or political opposition, which allegedly affected the homogeneity of the body politic.

The Nazi extermination policy discredited not only the ethnic variant of the notion of "people", but at the same time as its starting point, the construction of "the people" as a biological- genealogical descent community.