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Marginal note: The Hypo and the hype around the Hippo

08.16.2010 | 18:45 | THOMAS Kramar (The Press)

From a Greek preposition to a tired artiodactyls: For word history of the Hypo-banks (mortgage banks).
The car, Homo, the hetero, the Eso, the pseudo, which joins Tele: Hypo in the list of ancient Greek origin prefixes substantivized, right after the hype. From whom, taken literally, should be the sheer opposite: For “hyper” means “about” – hence the hyperbole, exaggeration – “hypo” means “under”, then the mortgage, which already known in ancient Greece , was on German translated as “pledge”. Other common words with “hypo” means hypothesis (assumption) and hypochondriac: his mental illness sit under the cartilage (“Chondros”) of the ribs, thought the old man.

For English ears, is the short form “hypo” for hypo or more for an injection (hypodermic “= means under the skin), the mortgage in German ” Hypothek “, which comes from French (” dead pledge “) and such the Rolling Stones song “Sittin ‘on a Fence” in front, where Mick Jagger sings about his brave peers disdainfully: “They mortgaged up their lives.”

How can we then translate that? No matter. Institutions with which it can be done, were founded at least in German speaking countries since the mid-19th century – as a logical interface between feudalism and capitalism, in other words, as responses to the Monopoly game from the well-known problem: I have a lot of land and houses and they really do not want to lose, but I want money, and fast.

Already in 1835 King Ludwig I. founded the Bavarian Mortgage and Exchange Bank (one of the predecessors of UniCredit Bank AG), and their Austrian counterparts followed gradually, in Lower Austria (1888), Austria (1890), Carinthia (1896), Vorarlberg (1897), Tirol (1898), Salzburg (1909). The last Burgenland (1928) were, Styria (1929) and Vienna (1931).

Only the similar sound owes the introduction of the hippopotamus as the mascot of the mortgage banks in the seventies: the clumsy cute animals are as colorful plastic figures and stones of various games to the collective memory plays a generation. (Or mistaken our memories? The homepage of the Hypo Tirol states that the mortgage banks were introduced in the late eighties, the Hippo-line advertising, but Hypo Tirol have opted instead for a blue square. Witnesses to the word!)

The “hippo” in Hippopotamus actually stands for “horse”, so this would also be offered as an emblem of the institution. Probably you have chosen the more sleepy hippopotamus, because it seems comfortable (though it can be quite aggressive in kind). Probably not, because it usually the water up to his neck, and often it is.

We read today in the network: “As a welcome gift from the mascots get small savers of the Hypo Alpe Adria Bank AG, Hippo ‘, a Golden Hippo-benchmark in order to note how much of a small savers!”

Herewith recorded.