{"id":188,"date":"2021-02-23T20:21:57","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T01:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/?p=188"},"modified":"2022-10-19T16:24:55","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T20:24:55","slug":"heimsuchen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/?p=188","title":{"rendered":"Heimsuchen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Flavio Gasperini on Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s not zuhausesuchen <\/em>or wohnsitzsuchen<\/em> or heimatsuchen<\/em>… There’s something about that use of Heim <\/em>in the word “to haunt; afflict; befall” (as war, a plague, a natural disaster) that really brings it home, just as if you visit me at my house it has a different feel than if you come to my home. Tax assessors visit my house; family comes to my home.

Heimsuchen<\/em> originates in the Middle High German heime suochen<\/em> “to seek someone out at home with good or ill intent.” Somewhere along the line the ill beat out the good, so that, at about the same time, the noun heimsuochunge<\/em> meant “trespass.”

My boyfriend and I were talking one morning, in the house alone, when we heard a knock on the closed office door, clear as day, tap tap tap.<\/em> Thinking my daughter had come home earlier than expected, I jumped up and opened the door. Nobody; not even a dog with a wayward tail or a hardworking cat (although it didn’t sound like a dog tail or a cat’s tenacity; it was human in origin).

Now and then, I remember that we’re being heimsucht<\/em> by a polite ghost and hope something more will happen. Maybe I can’t use heimsuchen<\/em> for such a retiring Casper, but the idea of a haunting by a considerate spirit, which is nonetheless an otherworldly haunting, does have that ambivalent feel that heimsuchen<\/em> used to have. “Intent good or ill.” Remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not zuhausesuchen or wohnsitzsuchen or heimatsuchen… There’s something about that use of Heim in the word “to haunt; afflict; befall” (as war, a plague, a natural disaster) that really brings it home, just as if you visit me at my house it has a different feel than if you come to my home. Tax…More <\/svg><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deutsch","category-german-etymology-deutsch","category-translation-deutsch","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odenzine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}