Reinhold Aman (April 8, 1936 – March 2, 2019) was a

chemical engineer In the field of engineering, a chemical engineer is a professional, equipped with the knowledge of chemical engineering, who works principally in the chemical industry to convert basic raw materials into a variety of products and deals with the ...

and professor of German before achieving national and even international recognition as the publisher of ''

Maledicta ''Maledicta'', ''The International Journal of Verbal Aggression'', was an academic journal dedicated to the study of offensive and negatively valued words and expressions, also known as maledictology. Its main areas of interest were the origin, e ...

'', a

scholarly journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...

dedicated to the study of offensive language, also known as maledictology.

Career

Aman was born in

Fürstenzell Fürstenzell ( bar, label=Central Bavarian, Fiaschtnzei) is a municipality in the district of Passau in Bavaria in Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most ...

near Passau, Bavaria. He studied chemical engineering in

Augsburg Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ' ...

and later worked as a chemical analyst and petroleum chemist in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

, and

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

prior to working as a translator and clerk for the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

in Frankfurt. He moved to

Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...

in 1959, initially working there as a metallurgist and analytical chemist. Aman earned a

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

at the

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UW–Milwaukee, UWM, or Milwaukee) is a public urban research university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is the largest university in the Milwaukee metropolitan area and a member of the University of Wiscons ...

in 1965, and he completed a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in German at the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

in 1968 with a dissertation on ''"Der Kampf in Wolframs Parzival"'' ("Combat in Wolfram's ''

Parzival ''Parzival'' is a medieval romance by the knight-poet Wolfram von Eschenbach in Middle High German. The poem, commonly dated to the first quarter of the 13th century, centers on the Arthurian hero Parzival (Percival in English) and his long ...

''"). During his university years he taught German, French, Spanish, and English at various high schools, usually on a part-time basis. In his final year at Texas, he also served as a

teaching assistant A teaching assistant or teacher's aide (TA) or education assistant (EA) or team teacher (TT) is an individual who assists a teacher with instructional responsibilities. TAs include ''graduate teaching assistants'' (GTAs), who are graduate school ...

and

teaching associate A teaching fellow (sometimes referred to as a TF) is an individual at a higher education institution, including universities, whose role involves teaching and potentially pedagogic research. The work done by teaching fellows can vary enormously fr ...

. Aman was hired in 1968 as an assistant professor of German at the

(which he later dismissed as "Dungheap U"), where he taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in German

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

, stylistics, conversation,

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

and

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

literature,

dialectology Dialectology (from Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , '' -logia'') is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their ass ...

bibliography Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ...

, and

research methods Research is "creativity, creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular att ...

. Denied promotion to tenure in 1974, he held that he had been terminated out of "pure professional jealousy". He subsequently began publishing ''Maledicta'' from his home.The Oracle of Opprobium: Reinhold Aman, 1936–2019
by Tristan Miller, in ''

Word Ways ''Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics'' is a quarterly magazine on recreational linguistics, logology and word play. It was established by Dmitri Borgmann in 1968 at the behest of Martin Gardner. Howard Bergerson took over as edit ...

'' vol. 53 no. 2 (February 2020) Apart from ''Maledicta'', Aman published a ''Bayrisch-Österreichisches Schimpfwörterbuch'' ("Bavarian-Austrian Curse Dictionary") () and shorter monographs as well as various books, including ''

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

's Pen Pal: A Guide to Life and Lingo in Federal Prisons ''English-language announcement on Aman's website, with links
/ref> () (1996). At the time, Clinton was experiencing legal difficulties, and Aman claimed he wanted to make use of his recent term in federal prison (see below) to inform her about prison customs and

argot A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argot ...

so that she could avoid potentially lethal ''faux pas''.

Prison term

In 1993, following a bitter divorce, Aman was sentenced to 27 months in

federal prison A federal prison is operated under the jurisdiction of a federal government as opposed to a state or provincial body. Federal prisons are used for convicts who violated federal law (U.S., Mexico), inmates considered dangerous (Brazil), or those s ...

for mailing a 2-page pamphlet entitled "Legal Slimebags of Wisconsin" to numerous Wisconsin lawyers and judges as well as threatening postcards to his ex-wife. The postcards included pasted-on headlines of news articles about women killed by their former husbands. He served 15.5 months at Santa Rita,

Terminal Island Terminal Island, historically known as Isla Raza de Buena Gente, is a largely artificial island located in Los Angeles County, California, between the neighborhoods of Wilmington and San Pedro in the city of Los Angeles, and the city of Long B ...

Lompoc Lompoc ( ; Chumash: ''Lum Poc'') is a city in Santa Barbara County, California. Located on the Central Coast, Lompoc has a population of 43,834 as of July 2021. Lompoc has been inhabited for thousands of years by the Chumash people, who called ...

, and

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

(now a Federal prison for women only), and was released in February 1995.

References

External links

* * * (Archived at HighBeam; subscription required) {{DEFAULTSORT:Aman, Reinhold German emigrants to the United States German chemical engineers 20th-century German chemists 1936 births 2019 deaths University of Texas at Austin alumni University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee alumni University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee faculty Professors of German in the United States People from Passau (district) Engineers from Baden-Württemberg

Career

Prison term

References

Further reading

External links