User talk:JALockhart

Your comments on the Anton Drexler talk page
Regarding your comments on the Anton Drexler talk page in which you assert that he was not a locksmith, you state that it is a common misinterpretation that "schlosser" in German means "locksmith" in English. If so, it must indeed be a common one. Out of curiosity I inserted schlosser into Google Translate and it came up as locksmith in English. William L. Shirer referred to Drexler as a railroad locksmith in his seminal history of the Nazis. As he lived in Germany and Austria for many years and married an Austrian, I assume he was fluent in the language.

On the other hand, Shirer did get some things wrong concerning the early days of the German Workers' Party. For example, he wrote that Ernst Röhm was already a member of the DAP when Hitler joined. That is untrue. He joined a couple of months later having been, like so many others, attracted by Hitler’s growing reputation and fiery rhetoric. Although The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is replete with footnotes, Shirer really doesn’t list any sources for the early period of DAP beyond what Hitler had written in Mein Kampf. I suspect he used unattributed verbal sources of dubious reliability at that late date, thirty or more years later.

Anyway, if you stand your ground about the correct English translation of "schlosser," then perhaps you might drop Google a line.HistoryBuff14 (talk) 20:33, 1 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi, User:HistoryBuff14. Thanks for your interest in my comment. I stand my ground with regard to the translation of Schlosser in reference to Drexler’s vocation. Allow me to explain.


 * In German, Schlosser is a broad generic term for metal workers, not only locksmiths (people who make or service locks). I suspect that Drexler was not a locksmith, but a fitter or machinist—someone who operates machine tools like lathes to fashion parts out of metal such as the machined components of a steam locomotive. See Schlosserei for details; note that there is no equivalent English article because English does not have a corresponding generic term covering all Schlosser’s bases. Many types of mechanics are also called Schlosser; e.g, Autoschlosser for a car mechanic; so as you can see, the “correct” English translation of Schlosser depends on the context in which it is used.


 * If you need substantiation for this, see: https://deen.dict.cc/?s=Schlosser, https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/Schlosser, or https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schlosser.


 * Meanwhile, I have no intention of helping Google improve its translation system for free. If you think Google Translate is a reliable dictionary tool, that’s up to you; but I would advise against using it that way, especially without providing it with broader context.


 * Best regards, Jim_Lockhart (talk) 16:49, 2 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Jim_Lockhart Thank you for your response. It is most appreciated.


 * I am not qualified to participate in a debate regarding nuances of the German language, hardly speaking it at all anymore and never having been able to read it. (I am half German by heritage and while my immigrant paternal grandparents lived, I spoke reasonably good German; with my grandfather noting that I had a remarkably authentic Bavarian accent for a nonnative.  He used to smile and jovially call me “My little Kraut-speaking Mick” (in German), as my mother was Irish and I took after her in looks and disposition.


 * For what it is worth, I too (independently of you as this was many years ago) wondered what exactly a railway locksmith was when I read this description of Drexler in Shirer’s book.  But I shrugged it off as I supposed railroad cars, especially freight ones, might have locks to safeguard cargoes and they would need attending to from time to time.  On the other hand, as I said, I’m sure Shirer had been fluent in German (as Kershaw probably is) and when discussing Drexler’s background with whomever he got his information from that Drexler had become a  locksmith after returning to Munich, Shirer was easily able  to understand what the source was describing.  (Of course, his source might have been wrong so many years later.  By the way, did Kershaw follow Shirer (possibly in error from your belief) or did he have an independent source? I haven’t read his book.)


 * This seems a critical point to me in attempting to understand your argument: Even if  “Schlosser”  does not mean “locksmith” per se, why are you stating or assuming that this was the term that either Shirer’s (probably verbal) or Kershaw’s (probably written) sources used?  Might not the sources have used the exact term for a locksmith in German thereby avoiding the misinterpretation of Schlosser that you seem to have assumed occurred?  Is it is noted in either or both of Shirer’s and Kershaw’s books that Drexler was described as a “Schlosser” in German as opposed to the more exact term?


 * By the way, I’m very familiar with the editor you were debating and sparring with on the Drexler talk page. Nazi Germany seems a special interest of his and he often appears whenever an edit is made to a related article, often reverting (in good faith, I’m sure).  He is a stickler on citations and disdains “original research.”  (If interested, please read my discourse with him when I trIed to change misinformation on the Ernst Röhm article (regarding when he joined DAP and his membership number vis-à-vis Hitler’s) after I corresponded with a preeminent British authority (who was knighted in recognition of his scholarship) on the Third Reich to verify my suspicion.  It can be found on the subject’s talk page.)


 * I admire your unconventional career path, apparently disdaining, for the most part, formal higher education—notwithstanding your obvious formidable intellectual capabilities—in favor of empirical attainment of erudition. You perhaps have a Bohemian streak within you not unlike William Shirer himself!  I also admire your facility with languages which Voltaire said was the mark of a truly educated man.  Whatever fluency I once might have had in German as a kid quickly deserted me from non-practice after my grandparents passed on.  As I said, my mom was not German so my father had little incentive to speak it afterwards.


 * I’m from Philadelphia where I have lived all my life save for a hitch in the Navy which seemed to satisfy whatever minimal wanderlust I might have once had. I have, of course, heard of Riverton, but I don’t believe I’ve been there, though I have been through much of Burlington County.  In addition to this in common, I share your apparent interest in Eastern metaphysics, especially the Zen school of Buddhism and the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism.  (While the latter is far more intellectual in tenor, I can’t discern a dime’s worth of substantive difference between them.  Indeed, many feel that Shankara formalized AV—which antedated him—as a counter-reformational vehicle to the Mahayana  Buddhism that was encroaching into his native India.  Although true to my conventional nature I retain my native Catholicism, these philosophies ring intuitively true to me based upon my life experiences.  I could write pages on the subject.


 * Best regards and wishes to your family and you in Japan!HistoryBuff14 (talk) 18:43, 3 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I suspect that neither Shirer nor Kershaw, despite their fluency in German, cared or were even aware of the many shades of meaning of Schlosser and so just used the first “translation” that came to mind. That is the extent of most people’s awareness of language. In any case, I’m not really interested in sparring with anyone over this kind of detail anymore, since it is usually a waste of time.


 * Fwiw, my parents were born and raised in Philly, too. :) Small world, huh?


 * Take care, and have fun on Wikipedia. Jim_Lockhart (talk) 04:50, 4 September 2018 (UTC)


 * HistoryBuff14, intrigued by some of your comments, I decided to dig a bit deep on the German word Schlosser. This has made me rethink some of what I wrote above. Up to this point, I’d assumed that Schlosser also means (what we call in English a) locksmith since so many German–English dictionary resources provide locksmith not only as a gloss, but as their primary gloss. But checking German–German dictionaries and other German-language sources, I’ve been able to find 'none' that primarily define or describe Schlosser as someone who builds or repairs locks; rather, they all describe Schlosser as a metal worker or mechanic of some sort, whether that is a fitter/machinist (someone who fashions objects out of blocks of metal or installs or assembles metal objects) or mechanic of some sort. Only one (https://www.dwds.de/wb/Schlosser) notes that a Schlosser is also someone who makes or repairs locks.


 * I therefore retract my position that Schlosser could also refer to locksmith in the vernacular. Although the term may have originated as the word for locksmith, I’m not more convinced than ever that when German speakers hear Schlosser, the first thing that comes to their minds is a machinist or mechanic of some sort, and only very rarely if at all do they associate it with locksmiths.


 * Whether to battle this out with the know-it-all on the Drexler article is another question whose answer I’ll leave up to you. Personally I think it would be a waste of time and so prefer to not get into it. Best regards, Jim_Lockhart (talk) 14:10, 5 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Jim_Lockhart Although I appreciate what you have written, you seem fixated on the correct English translation of “Schlosser” without explaining why you seem to just assume that Shirer had had some sort of brief conversation (I assume if he obtained the information from a written source he would have cited that in his book) in which his source merely stated in passing that Drexler had been a “Schlosser” when he moved back to his hometown of Munich from Berlin.  (Kershaw (and perhaps others) might have simply followed Shirer for all I know.)  Shirer and his source  might have spoken for several minutes during the course of which Shirer received elaboration about Drexler’s duties as a locksmith such as whether he built locks, repaired them or both.  You seem to have some preconceived reason why you doubt that Drexler had been a railway locksmith in Munich and then back into a guess that he is noted as such due to a misinterpretation of a single German word.


 * Without knowledge of where Shirer and Kershaw got their information and what such indicated exactly, the entire issue of what “Schlosser” means in English might be irrelevant for all we knowHistoryBuff14 (talk) 17:54, 5 September 2018 (UTC).


 * Don’t patronize me. You have no idea (appreciation of) what I wrote, and I can see that writing it was a total waste of time. My interest is purely linguistic accuracy: A Schlosser is a machinist or mechanic, not a locksmith; “locksmith” is a false cognate, and being taken in by false cognates (and their cousins, false friends) is quite common, especially among people who are not aware of them. That Shirer or anyone else got this detail wrong is a minor detail and in no way an impeachment of their scholarship on Nazi Germany, or even a discredit to them. In that sense, you’re probably right that its correct meaning in English is almost an irrelevancy within the overall context—it’s not even a tiny twig on a small branch of a meaningless tree in the proverbial forest.


 * As I’ve repeatedly said above, it’s not worth expending any energy on. I am not interested in making the case for the Drexler article. See the final paragraph of my previous response for details. Jim_Lockhart (talk) 13:59, 6 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Jim_Lockhart I’m sorry that you feel I have patronized you. Indeed, to the contrary I took your views seriously enough to expend the time and effort to contact someone very pertinent to this discussion for clarification; a source with the highest academic credentials.  I was most skeptical that he would respond:  but he did!  His response was to this effect:


 * He described Anton Drexler in a book he authored as a “locksmith” working for a railway because he had read in the Bavarian State Archives that Drexler had been a “Schlosser,” exactly as you have speculated.  Although he used the dictionary definition of “locksmith” in English, he now concedes that the word would have been better translated as either “fitter” or simply “mechanic,” again, exactly as you assert.


 * Prior to this email correspondence, I took no position as to your argument because I didn’t know why you seemed to assume that the description of Drexler being a locksmith came from a simple mistranslation of the single word “Schlosser.” I still don’t.  Nevertheless, the point is now moot as you have been proven correct.  Unfortunately, I cannot edit the Wikipedia article on Drexler based upon a private correspondence, even from such an impeccable source used within the article itself (some irony there).  You must therefore be satisfied with the knowledge that you have been correct all along while some illustrious writers and historians had been incorrect and that the article writers followed such in error.  I did, however, make a note of this on the Anton Drexler talk page in the relevant section.


 * Best regards.HistoryBuff14 (talk) 14:41, 7 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Wow! Thank you. I’m genuinely surprised, and I apologize for misinterpreting your intentions.


 * For the record: I was not assuming “that the description of Drexler being a locksmith came from a simple mistranslation of the single word Schlosser”; I just knew that Schlosser meant a fitter/machinist or mechanic of some sort, and I knew that from having lived and worked in Germany and had friends who were Schlosser. Of course, I also sought to substantiate my understanding (by tracking down references) before saying anything on the Drexler page; but it’s hard to fight an uphill battle like that when most established dictionaries are against you and the detail is too minor to be of substantial importance.


 * In any case, thank you for going to all that trouble. I really appreciate that and apologise for the gratuitous comment, which I will strike. Best regards, Jim_Lockhart (talk) 14:51, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

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