September 17, 1997

Realpolitik

Thanks for this site. Now politicians will have no highfalutin language to hide behind. What does the word "Realpolitik" mean?

The word Realpolitik refers to a policy of political realism or practical politics, that is, the politics of the real word rather than politics based on theoretical, moral, or idealistic concerns. The politics of power, in other words. Realpolitik suggests that a country will seek the increase of its own power for its own sake and will use whatever economic or military methods are necessary to accomplish this.

Realpolitik is a borrowing from German, where it basically means "realist politics." It is, as you might imagine, formed from real, borrowed from the same source as the English word real, and Politik 'politics; policy', from the same source as English politics.

The word Realpolitik is sometimes found in upper case, following the practice for other German nouns, and sometimes as realpolitik, as any fully Anglicized word. It is first found in English in 1914, in a work by George Bernard Shaw.