Tracking an underground language and the outcasts who depended on it for their survival becomes "a deeply personal project, one that probes the meaning of language and family, inheritance and debt" (Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times Book Review).
Centuries ago in middle Europe, a coded language appeared, scrawled in graffiti and spoken only by people who were "wiz" (in the know). This hybrid language, dubbed Rotwelsch, facilitated survival for people in flight—whether escaping persecution or just down on their luck. It was a language of the road associated with vagabonds, travelers, Jews, and thieves that blended words from Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Romani, Czech, and other European languages and was rich in expressions for police, jail, or experiencing trouble, such as "being in a pickle." This renegade language unsettled those in power, who responded by trying to stamp it out, none more vehemently than the Nazis.
As a boy, Martin Puchner learned this secret language from his father and uncle. Only as an adult did he discover, through a poisonous 1930s tract on Jewish names buried in the archives of Harvard’s Widener Library, that his own grandfather had been a committed Nazi who despised this "language of thieves." Interweaving family memoir with an adventurous foray into the mysteries of language, Puchner crafts an entirely original narrative. In a language born of migration and survival, he discovers a witty and resourceful spirit of tolerance that remains essential in our volatile present.
Martin Puchner, the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, is a prize-winning author, educator, public speaker, and institution-builder in the arts and humanities. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Language Games 1
Chapter 1 Camouflage Names 9
Chapter 2 The Book of Vagrants 26
Chapter 3 A Picture Comes into View 38
Chapter 4 The Rotwelsch Inheritance 54
Chapter 5 The King of the Tramps 76
Chapter 6 The Farmer and the Judge 97
Chapter 7 An Attic in Prague 119
Chapter 8 When Jesus Spoke Rotwelsch 134
Chapter 9 Igpay Atinlay for Adults 149
Chapter 10 The Story of an Archivist 160
Chapter 11 Judgment at Hikels-Mokum 177
Chapter 12 Error-Spangled Banner 196
Chapter 13 Your Grandfather Would Have Been Proud of You 212