STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL SYSTEMS

Author: Dr. Arnold Groh
Published in: Serels, M. Mitchell (Ed.): Semana Sepharad: The Lectures. Studies on Sephardic History. New York, 2001, pp. 33-56
Part II
Sephardim or Ashkenazim?

Only presumptions can be made about the cultural background, Sephardic or Ashkenazic, in most of the cases when Jews came to settle in and around Berlin. Quite surely, the majority of [...]

It is hard to imagine, but there is no comprehensive German/Yiddish dictionary in existence. For two languages so closely related, both with histories of linguistic enthusiasm, not to have a comprehensive dictionary seems entirely absurd. What makes this reality even more absurd is the growing amount of interest in Yiddish in Germany. At the University of Potsdam, all students majoring in Jewish studies are required to take Yiddish; there are academic centers of Yiddish in Trier and Dusseldorf, the New Synagogue in Berlin offers Yiddish courses, and Berlin itself has become a sort of a half way point for Klezmer musicians the world over. Yet despite the growing interest in Yiddish and Yiddish culture, there remains no comprehensive or practical German/Yiddish dictionary.

There is no doubt that Sephardim have made substantial contribution to Jewish life in Berlin. The city´s modern Jewish population is based on Sephardic immigrants, at least, there are enough hints that allow us to infer Sephardic backgrounds.
The Sephardim of Berlin have hardly left any traces. The reasons of this phenomenon cannot be found in the Holocaust alone; there must be other factors, as many Ashkenazic - or indifferently Jewish - data are manifest in historical records, archeological findings, etc.
With regard to Sephardic life in Berlin, all we can state is the unsuccessful efforts of research; present the scarce results; and point out possible reasons.

Umschlagklappen mit Aussprache und wichtigen Redewendungen, Wörterlisten Jiddisch-Deutsch, Deutsch-Jiddisch.

Glossary german-yiddish and yiddish-german, pronunciation clues, common expressions and useful phrases of the Yiddish language for german students of Yiddish and fans of the language.

The paper presented on the XXIX. International Congress of Psychology in July 2008 in Berlin, Germany contributes to the newest studies on colour concepts. Proving the propositions of Berlin & Kay (1969) that colour terms arose with the “development” of culture and language the author argues against the existence of the stage pattern as it was proposed by Berlin & Kay for the abstract colour terms in languages.
Upon a huge theoretical and empirical work lead in Germany as well as among indigenous nations in New Guinea, Benin, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon and South Africa the author concludes about the relations between cultural synthesis and language change.

Subjects from various cultural backgrounds filled out a forced-choice questionnaire concerning different job and living conditions in the Third and in the First World. The investigations took place in Nigeria, Switzerland, Cameroon, South Africa and Germany.

General Assembly (2007), Report of the human rights council

Summary: The CULTOS Authoring Tools allows some new approaches of structuring highly complex content. In contrast to conventional databases, the relations of the entities are to be defined according to a specific ontology, with emphasis being put on these intertextual aspects. As an example, the preparations for building a thread are demonstrated with the Grail topos. (…)

Das an der TU Berlin konzipierte Verfahren zur Analyse von Arbeiten im Haushalt (AVAH) ermöglicht die Erfassung der Strukturen von Alltagstätigkeiten. (…)

“Man verschließt die Augen vor den dramatischen Tatsachen, wenn man sich auf die offiziellen kartografischen Darstellungen verlässt, was die Verbreitung von Beschneidungs- und Verstümmelungspraktiken am weiblichen Genital in Afrika betrifft”, sagt PD Dr. Arnold Groh. Seit Jahren forscht und arbeitet der Psychologe auf diesem Gebiet und stellt immer wieder Diskrepanzen fest…” (…)