Quote:
Originally Posted by Milesian
One thing I just noticed - why is Eva Braun always referred to as Hitler's "mistress"? This infers that Hitler was married and this was a woman he was having an affair with. I don't recall Hitler having a wife. As such, if he was single then surely Braun was simply his girlfriend?
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The notion of girlfriend didn't exist back then, because old moral codes very still, to a certain extent, in vigour. A woman paired with a man was eiter his lawfully-wedded wife or mistress. The idea of boyriend/girlfriend stems from the period after the second world war and it implies much less seriousness. Notice the word "friend" in both these expressions. Lovers can't be friends, can they? Or they are not lovers in that case.
The Germans today say simply
Freundin (a female friend liteally), a word quite ambiguous.