Ossis and Amis

[Guest]

Serenajean

 

Sorry if my comment upset you. I would never call a person an Ossi.

 

If they use it themselves in a joking way, fine.

 

I do understand it may be hurtful - but some people really use it without being offensive.

 

If I was always called Inselaffe I would also be upset.

[Ragoro 38]

 

Die Baude trug in den dreißiger Jahren den Namen „Zum lustigen Ossi".

Ossi may refer to:

 

 

• A nickname given to former residents of East Germany
  
• The inhabitants of East Frisia in the northwest of the German state of Lower Saxony
  
• The male names Oskar (Oscar), Oswald, Osman
  
• The female name Oswalda
  
• The Ostwestfalendamm (a dual carriageway in Bielefeld)
  

 

 

So „Zum lustigen Ossi" might well mean "Zum lustigen Oswald/Oskar/Osman"

 

Wikipedia - Ossi

[westvan 9,706]

Eine Bergbaude mit 120-jähriger Geschichte

 

"Zum lustigen Ossi" was name after Oswald Richter.

[SJ1 2,052]

Lakey-

 

No no, it by no means offended me. I was just caught off guard by this other dude who keeps following me around and trying to argue that I did not respond properly.

 

I agree it is very much context as you point out. While I myself am not a fan of the word uses such as Ossi beer or even someone saying things like oh I had a nice Ossi breakfast ect, just because I feel it trivializes the historical insult, it doesn't upset me as much as when directed at people. Just as I am not a fan of rap music that uses racial slang as I feel the same that it is just perpetuating the cycle.

 

It is the labeling of people as a whole as Ossi, or actions against people as a "joke" that bother me.

 

As others mentioned it signifies a difference between people, one that ought be long gone. Though I will say inselaffe is awful, I had never heard it myself.

 

What gets on my tits (hehe I learned that here) is when people use it is a demeaning way shitty Ossi, oh hes just an ossi, or think jokes are funny. Even more so when coming from one of us, when we are the immigrants here.

 

To this day people make hurtful jokes, for instance every year around unification day people at my husbands work think its funny to put fruit like bananas on all the desks of people from East Germany, people actually hide where they are from because they feel so singled out. To me that is very nasty. And it is these types of things that to me just reinforce this cycle. That one is different based solely on where they are from. My husabdn was 6 when the wall fell, aside from a few silly kindergarden songs he remembers, he recalls more east germany post unification then actual DDR culture, though he does identify with it because here is is oftem treated as different. Heck even my 16 year old brother in law identifies himself as east German, because he is labeled as such even though he was born after the wall fell and never lived one day in the DDR.

 

In my integration course the teacher actually addresses that issue and said there is more bias towards east germans today then there is towards immigrants. That is what is very sad (I have no statistics just what she said). They are all Germans and these labels intended or not continue to divide rather then unite. And this idea that it is just a description of people is silly. No one calls an american from the west coast a wessi, no we are californians oregonians, ect. The same shoudl be true here thuringian, sachsisch, ect.

 

But I was in no way offended. Even those who have various opinions and think that some words are worse then others do not offend me, we all have different opinions.

 

Oh and just in terms of the other posts- I sure would not want that as a nickname. wow.

[ganzgeld 940]

@greattoucan I don't think I'd be upset, per say, if someone called me a Yankee, but I would correct them. I hear Yankee and I think mostly of New York. I guess it could theoretically be anyone north of the Mason-Dixon line. Yeah, definitely wouldn't be insulted, but it wouldn't make sense to me. It just feels too regionally specific. I think maybe in the same way someone from New York wouldn't want to be called a Cowboy?? I don't know if you watched "Band of Brothers" but it makes me think of the poor guy from Manhattan, Hall, who gets the nickname of Cowboy.

[DoubleDTown 395]

Dresden local paper just called Sachsen's prime minister an Ossi. 

 

Ist Kretschmer ein Russland-Versteher? Auf jeden Fall. ...  Ein sichtlich gerührter Michael Kretschmer steht auf und stößt mit Schwydkoi an. Das sind die Momente, da packt es ihn. Da ist er Ossi. Wie alle Ossis, denen die deutsch-sowjetische Freundschaft als Herzensangelegenheit von oben verordnet wurde, und von der doch irgendwie etwas hängengeblieben ist.

 

https://www.dnn.de/Region/Mitteldeutschland/Michael-Kretschmer-Der-Russland-Versteher-aus-Dresden

[Fietsrad 427]

I am proud to be an Ossi, especially as most people here can not identify my accent

..

'Ossis sind schlau und stellen sich dumm

Bei Wessis ist es anders rum'

Not expressing an opinion on this verse %)