Worldwide, nothing has shaped the year 2022 as much as Russia’s historically drastic attack on Ukraine and the war in Eastern Europe since then. In order to take the seriousness of the event into account, Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke of a veritable “turning point” in a Bundestag speech on February 27. The term is now word of the year 2022.
This was announced by the Society for the German Language (GfdS) in Wiesbaden on Friday morning. Their reasoning: the chancellor used the term originally used for the beginning of the Christian calendar in a “second sense”. “German economic and energy policy had to be completely realigned. Relationships with other international partners such as China were also critically examined. Many people also experienced an emotional turnaround,” the statement continues. Since the beginning of the war there had even been a fear of nuclear war and the Third World War.
With the “Words of the Year” campaign, the GfdS regularly selects terms that, in the opinion of the jury, have had a special linguistic impact on political, economic and social life. This time “War for Peace” came in second, followed by “Gas Price Brake” in third place. Thus, the first three places are directly related to the war in Ukraine.
“We are experiencing a turning point. And that means: The world after is no longer the same as the world before,” Scholz said three days after the start of the war. “The core issue is whether power is allowed to break the law, whether we allow Putin to turn the clock back to the days of the great powers of the 19th century, or whether we have the strength to set limits on warmongers like Putin.”
The war shattered old beliefs
Since then, the term has been closely intertwined with the federal government’s Ukraine policy. However, he is not only limited to the new reality that Putin created with his attack, but also describes the efforts that Germany must make in order to quickly reconsider decades-old beliefs, such as the refusal to allow weapons into war zones deliver, or the assumption that extreme energy dependence on Russia is not problematic.
Last year, “Wellenbrecher” was voted Word of the Year because the corona pandemic (Word of the Year 2020), which had been overshadowing everyday life for almost two years, repeatedly flushed the term into political and social debates. The word describes – outside of its actual origin in coastal protection – a lockdown that is so strict that it is able to break a growing wave of infections.