The first mention of “Kitsch” appeared in the translation of an interview with painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela in the Finnish press in 1908. At that time, the term was still so foreign that it was put in brackets, paraphrased and typographically marked. A fixed definition was still a long way off. And yet Finnish was one of the first languages in which the journey of a word began that soon extended far beyond the boundaries of the German-speaking world, with the term now in everyday use in other languages such as English, French, Spanish, and Italian.
From quotation to cultural reference
The new research presented by Finnish Studies professor Prof. Dr. Marko Pantermöller shows how "kitsch" first appeared in Finnish as an exotic loanword: usually capitalised, in quotation marks and accompanied by explanatory paraphrases. "Finnish authors often associated the term with Germany itself: with its art trade, consumer culture or political propaganda," explains Prof. Dr. Marko Pantermöller. "Kitsch" was a German export product – initially semantically, later on in cultural criticism.
It was not until the 1970s that it really started to become popular. Newspapers, critics and those involved in the creative arts now used the word confidently – no longer as a foreign element, but as a precise buzzword for exaggerations in popular culture, for sentimental aesthetics and postmodern everyday art. At the same time, increasingly integrated Finnish forms such as "kitsi" found their way into reference works and finally into the corpus of the Kielitoimiston sanakirja, the Finnish OED.
A German word in everyday Finnish life
The development of "kitsch" is a good example of how a German word in Finnish can go from being imported in a quote to becoming an integral part of everyday language. Prof. Dr. Marko Pantermöller says: "The word has evolved from a culture-bound expression to a genuine internationalism." This is in fact unusual, because only very few German loan words found their way into the language, which otherwise tries to get by without foreign terminology.
Today, "kitsch" is found in all kinds of settings in Finland: in feature articles, in everyday debates about decor, pop culture or politics and, increasingly, also in creative new forms of the word. The German "Kitsch" has become a Finnish "kitsi". In so doing, it has become part of the discussion on global-aesthetic issues in the Finnish language.
Further information
The essay "Vom kulturgebundenen Ausdruck zum Internationalismus: Das deutsche Wort Kitsch im Kontext usueller und normativer Integration im Finnischen" by Marko Pantermöller was published in the anthology
Pantermöller, M., Järventausta, M., Kolehmainen, L., & Kujamäki, P. (Eds.) (2025). Kulturen, Konvergenzen und Kommunikation: Begegnungen zwischen Finnland und dem deutschsprachigen Raum. (Mémoires de la Societé Néophilologique de Helsinki; Vol. 114 Société Néophilologique. https://doi.org/10.51814/8ctme436
Contact at the University of Greifswald
Prof. Dr. habil. Marko Pantermöller
Department of Finnish and Scandinavian Studies
Ernst-Lohmeyer-Platz 3 (Room E.28)
17487 Greifswald
Tel.: +49 3834 420 3611
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