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Comment by rubberpoliceman | Hacker News Reader

> In German it really just means "Citizen".

It most definitely does not — it’s both “citoyen” and “bourgeois”.

Thomas Mann was German, so he most definitely was not a "burgher", he was just a "Bürger". And the German "Bürger" is just "citizen" in English.

This isn’t hard to understand. “Burgher” is a perfectly legitimate translation of “Bürger” as in “bürgerlicher Mittagstisch”, “Der Bürger duldet nichts Unverständliches im Haus”. “Citizen” is a perfectly legitimate translation of “Bürger” when it comes to “Bürgeramt” or “Weltbürger”.

Well, Bürger means citizen, and bürgerlich means middle-class. Indeed, not hard to understand.

Please tell me you are trolling?

https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/B%C3%BCrger says:

Bedeutungen:

    [1a] Einwohner einer Gemeinde
    [1b] Angehöriger eines Staates
    [2] Angehöriger der Mittelschicht, des Bürgertums

Excellent. Now do “bürgerliches Gesetzbuch”.

The trolling of auggierose aside, whatever the bürgerliches Gesetzbuch might literally translate to, it is a triumph of the burghers, the bourgeoisie.

Law that applies only to the middle-class. Duh.

But you do know it applies to everyone in germany?

Cynicism is punishment looking for a crime.

It meant an upper middle class urban citizen, while "Kleinbürger" was their lower middle class counterpart. Buddenbrooks was all about Bürgers, their history and lifestyle. Mann was a member of that class or even of its upper crust, the patricians.

Did you know that some words have multiple meanings?

See eg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro%C3%9Fb%C3%BCrger or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Burgher or https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleinb%C3%BCrger

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