Volk

In contrast to German Volk being elevated to the sense of "nation" in the early 19th century, English folk came to be seen as inelegant at around the same time, being mostly replaced by the latinate people.

It re-entered formal or academic English only through the invention of the word folklore, coined in 1846 by William J. Thoms as an Anglo-Saxonism.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte in his Addresses to the German Nation, published still during the Napoleonic Wars from 1808 onwards, asked, in the eighth address, "What is a Volk, in the higher sense of the term, and what is love of the fatherland?," He answered that it could only be that "particular spiritual nature of the human environment out of which he himself, with all of his thought and action... has arisen, namely the people from which he is descended and among which he has been formed and grown into that which he is".

[1] The movement combined sentimental patriotic interest in German folklore, local history and a "back-to-the-land" anti-urban populism with many parallels with expressions of Romantic nationalism in other parts of Europe, such as the writings of William Morris.

Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf denounced usage of the word völkisch as he considered it too vague as to carry any recognizable meaning due to former over-use,[page needed] although he used it often, especially in connection with ethnic Germans or Volksdeutsche.

][year needed] had a broad set of meanings, and referred sometimes to the entirety of German nation and other times to the Nordic race.

[3] In the writings of leading Nazi thinkers, such as Alfred Rosenberg and Hans Günther several Völker or "peoples" made up a Rasse or "race", so these two terms did not always denote the same concept.

The slogan meant that the "simple people" would no longer endure the dictatorship, and wanted to reform the political system of the GDR.

In 2015 the slogan "Wir sind das Volk" became popular again among members of PEGIDA (a nationalist movement), and various groups that claimed to stand in the tradition of Monday Demonstrations.

Now the word "Wir" was used by right wing protesters to refer to themselves, in order to distinguish from migrants and so-called "Gutmenschen", Germans that supported refugees.

After Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to give shelter to a growing number of refugees, especially from Syria, in 2015, right wing groups as well as more modest movements, that were referred to by the media as "the concerned citizens", started to use the slogan.

They wanted to indicate that, according to their beliefs, the Volk (meaning only ethnic Germans) should have more rights[examples needed] than immigrants and especially refugees.

The word 民族 is often used by nationalists in China ("zhonghua minzu"), Korea ("minjok"), and Vietnam ("dân tộc").