El alemán y sus largas palabras

Retomando el libro de Mark Twain citado hace unos días, os dejamos con los siguientes párrafos, en los que satiriza agudamente la tendencia del alemán de amalgamar palabras para crear nuevas palabras compuestas. Disfrutadlo.

"In my note-book I find this entry:
July 1. -- In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen syllables was successfully removed from a patient -- a North German from near Hamburg; but as most unfortunately the surgeons had opened him in the wrong place, under the impression that he contained a panorama, he died. The sad event has cast a gloom over the whole community.

That paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about one of the most curious and notable features of my subject -- the length of German words. Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these examples:
Freundschaftsbezeigungen. 
Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten. 
Stadtverordnetenversammlungen. 

These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And they are not rare; one can open a German newspaper at any time and see them marching majestically across the page -- and if he has any imagination he can see the banners and hear the music, too. They impart a martial thrill to the meekest subject. I take a great interest in these curiosities. Whenever I come across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum. In this way I have made quite a valuable collection. When I get duplicates, I exchange with other collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here are some specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter:
Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen. 
Alterthumswissenschaften. 
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten. 
Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen. 
Wiedererstellungbestrebungen. 
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen."

Mark Twain, The Awful German language