German Language Stack Exchange is a bilingual question and answer site for speakers of all levels who want to share and increase their knowledge of the German language. It's 100% free, no registration required.
Sign up to join this community
explaining the expression
aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben
(meaning something like 'rescheduled does not mean cancelled') to a friend of mine, I was wondering about the word aufheben, which means both pick up and cancel
What is the etymology (of the cancel meaning) of aufheben? And: are the two meanings somehow related to each other?
In the german Duden you can't find an entry in the etymology. I found a similar question. The answer desrcibes how das Aufheben der Tafel is having the same meaning like das Beenden des Essens. With aufheben der Tafel it is meant to pick up the tabletop and carry it away and with this action you cancel or finish the lunchtime. Having a carryable tabletop is comming from medieval times. So the entire dish and lunch is served in one action.
Nowadays aufheben in the meaning of to cancel, is often used for cancellation of a sentence. To assign a curse to someone can be translated to jemanden mit einem Fluch belegen so you make him carry the weight of the curse or you lay the weight of the curse down on the person. In this way it also makes sense to pick up the weight of the curse again. Einen Fluch aufheben is also translated to recall the curse. So first you let the person carry the weight/burden of something and pick up the weight/burden again in order to cancel the sentence. The example you stated in your question also implies that the person who has to complete a task or fulfill a agreement doesn't want to do so. Therefore the person is carrying a burden around and will be relieved from the burden after doing whatever the person is supposed to do or the other person who forced the agreement will recall it. So in this situation aufheben is used as a synonym for entlasten (engl. relieve). So the party that was affected negativly by some changes is becoming its freedom back and is therefore entlastet because something or someone picked up the weight/burden again.
Note: etwas aufheben with the meaning of to cancel always implies it's easier for the opponent party to cancel the agreement, than it is for the other party to fulfill it. For example the king can just order to unblock a blocked road again, while you would have to put in a lot of efford to pass the road that the king blocked before. To be able to cancel/aufheben something, it always implies the opponent party has a higher rank or you are in debt.
Consider the English phrase:
The ban was lifted.
Which is equivalent to:
Die Sperre wurde aufgehoben.
In this case, both words (lifted, aufgehoben) are used in the meaning of cancelled (or more literally: taken away, removed), although they usually have different, but also pretty equivalent meanings.
Grimm provides under section 9 of aufheben the folllowing:
noch häufiger ist die abstraction des aufhebens, wegnehmens, tilgens und abschaffens
There are numerous examples for the meaning cancellation, like Vorschrift, Ausnahmezustand, Hausarrest and it is interesting, that the opposite, the establishment can frequently be formulated with erlassen, which may mean put down in the similar way as aufheben means lift.
Since we're happily speculating away here, note that Latin already has the same ambiguity: tollere means both to take away (metaphorically), to abolish and to take away (literally), to lift.
The shift in meaning is fairly natural: If I want to take something away, first I need to lift it, or at least pick it up. But it might also well be the case that aufheben is a semantic loan from Latin.
When looking at the etymology of heben we can see that it was and is not only used in the meaning of to lift, to heave (same root) but also figuratively, e.g. (incomplete list!):
