Liliputin in German- 1279

Die VW -Kaeferkarriere rueckte von halbstark zu halbgewalkt ... "
Ferdinand Porsche


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Halbstarke


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Halbstarke ("beatnik", literally "half-strongs") is a German term describing a postwar-period subculture of adolescents – mostly male and of working class parents – that appeared in public in an aggressive and provocative way during the 1950s in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Later, the term sometimes described youths in general. While in German, it is still in use today for young, aggressive, mostly male adolescents, it has mostly fallen out of active usage in English.


Literal meaning

The word itself literally means “the half-strong”. Its origins can be traced back to a manufacturing technology named Walken (= to tumble/ mill/ full), via the word’s synonym Halbgewalkte– “half tumbleds”. Seen that way, the word is a defamation, because it can be associated with “unformed” and “premature” (in German, there also are a few other slight verbal slanders containing “halb”: e.g. halbgebildet (literally: half-educated) and halbe Portion (literally: half dish / half portion, used for children or adolescents that appear weak. But it is likely that the defamation was not as defamatory to the subculture itself, because its members began calling themselves “Halbstarke”, too. In German, both terms also have an adjective-form (halbstark / halbgewalkt).