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Reich ( ; ) is a German language word whose meaning is analogous to the English word "realm". The terms Kaiserreich and Königreich are respectively used in German in reference to and kingdoms. In English usage, the term " Reich" often refers to Nazi Germany, also called "the Third Reich".
The term German Reich]] (sometimes translated to "German Empire") continued to be used even after the collapse of the German Empire and the abolition of the monarchy in 1918. There was no emperor, but many Germans had imperialistic ambitions. According to historian Richard J. Evans:
The term is used for historical empires in general, such as the Roman Empire (Römisches Reich), Persian Empire (Perserreich), and both the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire (Zarenreich, literally "' realm"). Österreich, the name used for Austria today, is composed of Öster- and Reich which, literally translated, means "Eastern Realm". The name once referred to the eastern parts of the Holy Roman Empire.
In the history of Germany specifically, it is used to refer to:
The Nazis adopted the term "Third Reich" to legitimize their government as the rightful successor to the retroactively renamed "First" and "Second" Reichs – the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire, respectively; the Nazis discounted the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic entirely. The terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich" are not used by historians, and the term "Fourth Reich" is mainly used in fiction and political humor, although it is also used by those who subscribe to neo-Nazism.
Reich is comparable in meaning and development (as well as descending from the same Proto-Indo-European root) to the English word "realm" (via French from Latin ).
The German noun Reich is derived from , which together with its cognates in , , and is derived from a Common Germanic rīkijan. The English noun survives only in the compounds bishopric and archbishopric.
The German adjective reich]], on the other hand, has an exact cognate in English rich. Both the noun (rīkijan) and the adjective (rīkijaz) are derivations based on the Common Germanic rīks "ruler, Germanic king", reflected in Gothic as reiks, glossing ἄρχων "leader, ruler, chieftain".
It is probable that the Germanic word was not inherited from pre-Proto-Germanic, but rather loaned from Celtic (i.e. Gaulish rīx, Modern Welsh rhi, both meaning 'king') at an early time.Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, original suggestion from Karl Brugmann grundrisz der vergl. gramm. 1, 65. Also mentioned in e.g. Calvert Watkins, American Heritage dictionary of Indo-European Roots, p. 70.
The word has many cognates outside of Germanic and Celtic, notably and . It is ultimately from Proto-Indo-European reg-, .
Resistance against the French Revolution with its concept of the state brought a new movement to create a German "ethnical state", especially after the Napoleonic Wars. Ideal for this state was the Holy Roman Empire; the legend arose that Germany were "un-defeated when unified", especially after the Franco-Prussian War ( Deutsch-Französischer Krieg, lit. "German-French war"). Before that, the German question ruptured this "German unity" after the 1848 Revolution before it was achieved, however; Austria-Hungary as a multinational state could not become part of the new "German empire", and nationality conflicts in Prussia with the Prussian Poles arose ("We can never be Germans – Prussians, every time!").
The advent of national feeling and the movement to create an ethnically German Empire did lead directly to nationalism in 1871. Ethnic minorities declined since the beginning of the modern age; the Polabs, Sorbs and even the once important had to assimilate themselves. This marked the transition between Antijudaism, where converted Jews were accepted as full citizens (in theory), to Antisemitism, where Jews were thought to be from a different Ethnic group that could never become German. Apart from all those ethnic minorities being de facto extinct, even today the era of national feeling is taught in history in German schools as an important stepping-stone on the road to a German nation.
The exact translation of the term "German Empire" would be Deutsches Kaiserreich. This name was sometimes used informally for Germany between 1871 and 1918, but it was disliked by the first German Emperor, Wilhelm I, and never became official.
The unified Germany which arose under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1871 was the first entity that was officially called in German Deutsches Reich. italic=no remained the official name of Germany until 1945, although these years saw three very different political systems more commonly referred to in English as: "the German Empire" (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933; this term is a post-World War II coinage not used at the time), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945).
Although the term "Third Reich" is still commonly used in reference to the Nazi dictatorship, historians avoid using the terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich", which are seldom found outside Nazi propaganda. During and following the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria in 1938, Nazi propaganda also used the political slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer ("One nation, one Reich, one leader"), in order to enforce Pan-Germanism sentiment. The term Altes Reich ("old Reich"; cf. French ancien regime for monarchical France) is sometimes used to refer to the Holy Roman Empire. The term Altreich was also used after the Anschluss to denote Germany with its pre-1938 post-World War I borders. Another name that was popular during this period was the term Tausendjähriges Reich ("Thousand-Year Reich"), the Millennialism of which suggested that Nazi Germany would last a thousand years.
The Nazis also spoke of enlarging the then-established Greater German Reich into a "Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation" ( Großgermanisches Reich Deutscher Nation) by gradually and directly annexing all of the historically Germanic countries and regions of Europe into the Nazi state (Flanders, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden etc.).Elvert, Jürgen (1999) (in German). Mitteleuropa!: deutsche Pläne zur europäischen Neuordnung (1918–1945), p. 325. Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH. .
The word is part of the official names of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the form of , , and , all meaning kingdom, or literally the "realm of a king" (a kingdom can also be called kongedømme in Danish and Norwegian and kungadöme or konungadöme in Swedish, direct cognates of the English word). Two regions in Norway that were petty kingdoms before the unification of Norway around 900 AD have retained the word in the names (see Ringerike and Romerike). The word is also used in "Svea rike", with the current spelling Sverige, the name of Sweden in Swedish. Thus in the official name of Sweden, Konungariket Sverige, the word rike appears twice.
The derived prefix rigs- (Danish and pre-1907 Norwegian) and riks- (Swedish and Norwegian) and implies nationwide or under central jurisdiction. Examples include riksväg and riksvei, names for a national road in Swedish and Norwegian. It is also present in the names of numerous institutions in all the Scandinavian countries, such as Rigsrevisionen (the agency responsible for oversight of the state finances in Denmark) and Sveriges Riksbank (commonly known as just Riksbanken), the central bank of Sweden. It is also used in words such as udenrigs (Danish), utrikes (Swedish) and utenriks (Norwegian), relating to foreign countries and other things from abroad. The opposite word is indenrigs/inrikes/innenriks, meaning domestic.
The adjective form of the word, rig in Danish and rik in Swedish/Norwegian, means "rich" like in other Germanic languages.
In a political sense in the Netherlands and Belgium, the word rijk often connotes a connection with the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Kingdom of Belgium as opposed to the European part of the Netherlands or the provincial or municipal governments. The ministerraad is the executive body of the Netherlands' government and the rijksministerraad that of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a similar distinction is found in wetten (laws) versus rijkswetten (kingdom laws) or the now-abolished rijkswacht () for the Belgian Gendarmerie. The word rijk can also be found in institutions like the Rijkswaterstaat, Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu and Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. The German way of applying rijk is largely followed in Dutch, resulting in Frankrijk (France), Oostenrijk (Austria) and the historical Persische Rijk and Romeinse Rijk for the Persian and Roman Empires respectively.
In colloquial speech, rijk usually means working for the central government rather than the provincial or municipal government, much as Americans refer to the "federal" government.
In Afrikaans, ryk refers to rulership and area of governance (mostly a kingdom), but in a modern sense, the term is used in a much more figurative sense (e.g. Die Hemelse Ryk , China), as the sphere under one's control or influence:
As in German, the adjective rijk/ryk also means "rich".
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