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Comment by DoreenMichele

4 years ago

Oh.

That makes sense.

Herr Doktor just means Mister Doctor. "The Doctor is always right is the 11th commandment. Moses ran out of space to add that to the stone tablets (where he wrote the first ten)."

I think it is worded awkwardly. I also had trouble parsing that.

5 comments

DoreenMichele

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chiph  4 years ago

German is also famous for stringing several words together, so you will also see "Herr Doktoringenieur" for someone who has a PhD in engineering. And is even more right than a regular Herr Doctor because he is also an Engineer.

  • yokaze  4 years ago

    > Doktoringenieur

    Never seen it in practical German though.

    > And is even more right than a regular Herr Doctor because he is also an Engineer.

    On the contrary. The traditional universities didn't want to accept technical universities as full ones.A full university is supposed to have theology, jurisprudence, philosophy and medicine. Technical universities were more practical oriented and to some degree looked down upon. So they couldn't give "proper" doctor titles. Just "dr.-ing." (note the hyphen), compared to "Dr. Med.", "Dr. Phil."...

    The Dutch apparently do have a double title for doctors, which are also engineers.

    • Tijdreiziger  4 years ago

      > The Dutch apparently do have a double title for doctors, which are also engineers.

      I suppose this is technically true, but AFAIK, you'd just use 'dr.', which would imply that you're also 'drs.' or 'ir.' (as you can't be one without also being the other).

      Of course, these days, communication is more casual and you'd be just as likely not to use your title. When I was in University, all of my Dutch professors signed their emails with just their name (no titles), but one of my professors from Germany would stubbornly sign all his emails as 'dr. ir. nat. habil.' :D