LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii

LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii

LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen (1947) is a book by Victor Klemperer, Professor of Literature at the University of Dresden. The title, half in Latin and half in German, translates to The Language of the Third Reich: A Philologist's Notebook.

Lingua Tertii Imperii studies the way that Nazi propaganda altered the German language to inculcate people with National-Socialist ideas. The book was written under the form of personal notes which Klemperer wrote in his diary, especially from the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933, and even more after 1935, when Klemperer, stripped of his academic title because he was Jewish (under the Nuremberg Laws), had to work in a factory and started to use his diary as a personal exit to his frustrating and miserable life.

LTI demonstrates how a new language came to be naturally spoken by most of the population. On the reverse, the text also emphasizes the idea that resistance to oppression begins by questioning the constant use of buzzwords. Both the book and its author unexpectedly survived the war. LTI was first published in 1947 in Germany.

It underlines odd constructions of words intended to give a "scientific" or neutral aspect to otherwise heavily engaged discourses, as well as significant every-day behaviour.