‘des
anderen’ and ‘der anderen’
“Einer
trage des anderen Last.”
This
sentence will push your grammatical knowledge to the limit.
‘Einer’
is an indefinite pronoun.
Keiner
ging, doch einer kam. Siehe! Der Lenz lacht in den Saal!
No
one went, but [some]one came. Look,
spring (Lent) is laughing into the
room!
The
verb ‘trage’ comes from tragen (wear, carry, bear). Ich trage keinen Hut. (I wear no
hat.) However, when the third
person has an –e ending, it is the present subjunctive.
Er
sagte, der Mann trage keinen Hut. He said
the man was not wearing a hat.
‘Des’
tells us that a sing. masc. genitive noun follows, but ‘Last’ has no ‘s’, and even more
important, it can’t ever have an ‘s’ because it’s fem., so the
sing. masc. genitive noun is missing, and we will have to do without it. We will try to imagine it: see below.
That
means that ‘Last’ must serve some other role, and ‘Last’ is the accusative
(direct) object. We have a clue to
the meaning of ‘Last’, if we recall the word for truck, ‘Lastwagen’.
The
words ‘des anderen’ form a genitive construction, so the meaning is burden
of the other. Such genitive
constructions are considered poetic when they precede the noun.
Tief
hing ihm der Hut. Der deckte der Augen
eines. Deep hung his (the) hat. IT (emphatic) covered one of his eyes.
You
may wish to imagine the missing noun, for example Mensch or Mann. Here’s something you can rely on -- ‘des’
is always singular in German.
die
Last des anderen [Mannes]
die
Last des anderen [Menschen]
That
helps to explain the –en ending on anderen. It is a weak adjective-ending. (Primarily, andere- is an adjective.)
When
you remove the noun -- “die Last des
anderen” -- anderen then is not an adjective anymore. It becomes a pronoun, but the ending is the
same as before. When forms of andere
(and beide) are used this way, they are not capitalized, even under the
reformed spelling rules.
Conclusion: the translation is -- [It was said,] “One was carrying the burden
of the other.
Ein privates Lungensanatorium um 1950 in der DDR. Ein junger
Volkspolizist und ein junger Vikar teilen sich ein Krankenzimmer.
In
the next example, the missing noun is most likely a plural for people, although
a singular feminine is also a possibility.
Here are some possibilities to
consider:
(Plural)
das
Leben der anderen [Männer]
das
Leben der anderen [Menschen]
das
Leben der anderen [Leute]
das
Leben der anderen [Personen]
das
Leben der anderen [Frauen]
(or
Singular)
das
Leben der anderen [Person]
das
Leben der anderen [Frau]
Contrary
to the example below, capitalization is not required, or even recommended.
Das Leben der Anderen
Das
Leben der Anderen ist ein mit einem Oscar ausgezeichneter deutscher Kinofilm.
[mehr]
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Leben_der_Anderen