Memorial Vs. Denkmal (It is not the same thing!)

A week has passed since the workshop with #NIF at a school, north east of Berlin's center. The class kids were one day from receiving their report, and to lower the bar, it was the international holocaust rememberance day, I imagine that for some, this gave a stronger insentive to skip school, and not need to come and hear an Israeli...

But we connected,

Jan was smart enough to give the group various memorialss, so they don't feel pushed into the Israeli-Palestinian "Standing Together" organization, running a mutual rememberance ceremony, in which people from both sides who suffered loss, and still believe that peace can be the only way, Some talk about the challenges ahead in the Israeli Palestine conflict. All in a respectful manner and a careful way.

after that, the students went out, and took photographs of their thoughts about violance, signs of terror, or perpetration.

Some ideas were so beautiful, check them out!

Here is what Claude had to add to this idea of Denk -> Gedenk...

Is this right? is this just a madeup glitch in a code? 😬...Donno...to me it makes sense

Q: I am on an epistemology quest...after the source of the German word "gedenke" as this word means memorial, I wonder if its roots are from the past form of the word "to think". can you contribute to the development or evolution of this word?

A: Let me trace the full lineage. *The Proto-Indo-European root: teng-

Everything starts around 5,000+ years ago with the PIE root *teng-, meaning "to think, feel, perceive, know." This is the ultimate ancestor — a root that encodes the very act of conscious perception.

*Proto-Germanic: þankijaną

From teng- came the Proto-Germanic þankijaną, meaning "to think," which is the common ancestor of Old English þencan, Old Frisian thinka, Old Saxon thenkian, Old High German denchen, Gothic þagkjan, and German denken. So yes — denken (to think) and gedenken (to commemorate) are blood relatives.

The ge- prefix: the key transformation

Gedenken comes from Middle High German gedenken, from Old High German gidenken, from Proto-West Germanic gaþankijan — equivalent to ge- + denken.

The prefix ge- (Old High German gi-) is crucial here. In Old and Middle High German it was an intensifying or completive prefix on verbs, implying a sense of turning one's thought fully toward something — bringing it fully to mind. So gidenken didn't just mean "to think" abstractly; it meant "to think of" a specific person or moment, to hold them in deliberate mental attention. From that meaning of directed, intentional remembrance, the word evolved toward commemoration.

The fascinating parallel in English

The English word thought is cognate with the second element in German Gedächtnis (memory), Andacht (attention, devotion), and Bedacht (consideration, deliberation) — all formed with the same ge-/be-/an- prefix pattern applied to the denk-/dacht- root.

The semantic drift: from thinking → remembering → memorializing

This is where it gets philosophically rich. The journey of meaning went roughly:

1. to think (PIE, purely cognitive)

2. to think of someone (Proto-Germanic, directing thought toward a person)

3. to remember, to keep in mind (Old/Middle High German — the past is what one "thinks of")

4. to commemorate (Modern German — the public, ritualized act of directed memory)

There is something deeply true embedded in this evolution: to memorialize someone is to think of them deliberately, to make thought of them an act rather than a passing impression. The word carries its whole philosophical history in its bones — the idea that memory is not passive but a form of intentional cognition, a reaching back of the mind.

And you can see the same root branching in two directions even in English: think (active reasoning) and thank — both derive from PIE tong-, and thank originally meant "thought" or "good thoughts toward someone," the sense evolution being from holding someone in mind to expressing gratitude for them. So gedenken, denken, think, and even thank are all cousins under the skin.

I like the idea that "thank" also entered this line of thought.

so - thinking - is part (or the begining) of a process which leades to "thanking", which is why they sound alike...

it's almost as if knowledge and acknowledge woud derive from thinking too....right? 🤩