OberFuhrer, the Hobourg Special Hero!!!

[The_Tauren13]

yeah i like how it completely digressed into a history/language lesson

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by The_Tauren13:
yeah i like how it completely digressed into a history/language lesson

If you check back you will see that alot of the discussions about the nations and their names tended to do that. I think we have covered just about everything that was ever covered in my high-school and college history courses.

But then again, considering that the games themes were done by a Professor of Religion and Social Sciences maybe thats not so unusual.

[reverend]

Just a small correction...

Look, oberfuhrer itself is an actual German word for an army rank

Is not entirely correct. This rank, together with others like "Feldmarschall" (think Rommel), were abandoned after WW2. So, yes, as a German, I can say that the term "Oberführer" immediately rises associations with Nazi Germany.

On the other hand, I play WW2 flightsims with historical correct markings (even if it's illegal...), so I'm not offended by this. I can however understand, how other people can be.

So just accept the remark, that it is a poor choice for a unit name, and maybe consider leaving it out in Dom3.

[Cohen]

Personally I've even nothing against a FeldMarshall or such other terms.

They were military rank ... even if related to a movement and ideology that is seen in negative way, but they're words ... a simple work to recognize something.

[tinkthank]

Hee hee yes.

While it was silly of whomever it was to believe that because Illwinter may have installed a commander named "Oberführer" that they shared sympathy with national socialism of the pre-war German bent, it is not incorrect to mention that certain words (including singular termini) have become bound up, in certain contexts, with other meaning.

(I happen to be an analytic philosopher (philosophy of language), and recently wrote a book on singular terms and their meanings: the shameless plug to the amazon link
-- it is written in German however.)

(Edit: removed a ridiculous half-phrase typo here)

Thus many people may (rightly) be worried by the (otherwise unqualified) placement of a character named "Oberführer" in a game. Not that the placement here indicates anything of the sort -- far from it. But it is equally silly to maintain that any "usage" of any word should be Banned: I know I shouldnt be saying this, but "words" don't have "meanings", *utterances of signs* can have "meanings" (the word meaning itself is very complicated, as you can imagine; there was a pretty crappy book called "The Meaning of Meaning" written by Osgood and Richards, which has since been commented on muchly, most famously by Hilary Putnam in his article "The Meaning of the Meaning of Meaning" (this is not a joke)) *when used as speech acts*. (I can hear Norfleet yelling "guns don't kill people, people kill people!" at me in the background.)

But don't we all secretly wear little black trenchcoats and black boots and those tiny moustaches and hide in the ... oh wait, sorry, forget that.

[ July 14, 2004, 12:30: Message edited by: tinkthank ]

[PrinzMegaherz]

Personally I've even nothing against a FeldMarshall or such other terms.

Actually, Feldmarshall is no word associated with WW2 (at least not in germany). Words with a negativ association are Sturm and Führer. The modern german army has no rank including one of these words (although there some functions still using the word führer)

[Chazar]

Being german, I can also understand that the hoburgs title will certainly irritate people in germany, including me a tiny bit, but I cant say actually why if I try to think about it...

I am no expert on this, but if I think of my own everyday speech, I would hardly say "Führer" but rather "Anführer". I cant tell the difference between those two, except that the latter has no negative meaning to it...