The Permission a Whole City Grants Itself: On Erlaubnis
das Wort / the word:die Erlaubnis (f.), pl. die Erlaubnisse
Aussprache / pronunciation: air-LOWP-niss
Wortart / part of speech: Noun, feminine
Register: Everyday and formal both. Used for a child asking to leave the table and for an official license alike.
Nicht Gebot, Sondern Erlaubnis / Not Commandment, But Permission
July's word, das Gebot, named a command imposed from above, binding through authority regardless of the person obeying it. Die Erlaubnis works in the opposite direction entirely. It does not compel anything. It simply clears an obstacle, granting that an action already desired may now proceed without penalty. A Gebot tells you what you must do. An Erlaubnis tells you only that you may, if you already wanted to, stop worrying about the consequences of doing it.
This distinction sits at the exact center of Das Liebesverbot's comedy. The opera's whole plot is set in motion by a prohibition, a Verbot, banning love and pleasure outright under threat of punishment. What the story ultimately stages is not a new command replacing the old one but something much quieter: a city's collective, unauthorized decision to behave as though permission had been granted, whether or not anyone in charge had actually granted it. December's walk begins, deliberately, not with restraint but with exactly this feeling. Permission, seized rather than issued.
Erlaubnis, Die Sich Niemand Erbeten Hat / Permission Nobody Asked For
Standing on Mulberry Street as the Overture begins, this month's walk observes people choosing warmth over rules, outdoor heaters defying winter, laughter spilling into the street without anyone's formal sign-off. This is Erlaubnis operating through simple, mass refusal to keep asking. Nobody here has petitioned an authority for the right to gather. The gathering itself has become the permission, retroactively justified by its own persistence rather than granted in advance by anyone with the standing to grant it.
This is a genuinely different mechanism from the civic drama examined last month, where a crowd's belief in Rienzi's Versprechen rose and fell on the strength of a single charismatic voice. Nobody on Mulberry Street is waiting for a voice to authorize their pleasure. They have simply proceeded as though the authorization already existed, and in practice, once enough people behave this way simultaneously, the distinction between actually having permission and simply acting as though you do collapses into something functionally identical.
Die Heuchelei Braucht Ein Verbot, Um Zu Existieren / Hypocrisy Needs a Ban to Exist
Erlaubnis only becomes visible, worth naming, once something has first tried to withhold it. This is why the opera needs its prohibition before it can stage its comedy of permission reclaimed. A city that had never been told no would have no occasion to notice itself saying yes anyway. The enforcer's ban, however sincerely or hypocritically motivated, is what turns ordinary pleasure-seeking into something with dramatic and civic weight, a deliberate, visible act of granting yourself what someone else tried to take away.
This is worth holding onto as this month proceeds, because it clarifies something about Erlaubnis that a simple dictionary definition would miss. The word describes not merely the absence of prohibition but, in its most interesting uses, the specific, felt experience of reclaiming something that prohibition had briefly, unsuccessfully, tried to withhold. Permission granted without ever having been threatened barely registers as permission at all. It is only once a Verbot has entered the picture that Erlaubnis becomes something worth walking toward.
Grammatik / Grammar
Die Erlaubnis is feminine, plural die Erlaubnisse.
Key constructions:
um Erlaubnis bitten, to ask for permission
jemandem die Erlaubnis erteilen, to grant someone permission
mit Erlaubnis, with permission, by leave
erlauben (v.), to allow, to permit
sich etwas erlauben, to take the liberty of doing something, to permit oneself something (a useful reflexive construction, often carrying a hint of mild transgression)
Note the reflexive form sich etwas erlauben, which captures precisely the mechanism this essay describes: permission granted not by an outside authority but by the self, to the self, often with a knowing awareness that the granting is somewhat cheeky.
Verwandte Wörter / Related Words
das Gebot (n.), commandment (July's word: an imposed obligation, the opposite mechanism)
das Verbot (n.), prohibition, ban (the word this whole opera takes its title from)
erlauben (v.), to allow, to permit
die Freiheit (f.), freedom
gestatten (v.), to permit, a more formal synonym
die Genehmigung (f.), official approval, authorization (the more bureaucratic cousin)
die Lust (f.), desire, pleasure (this month's next word: what Erlaubnis clears the way for)
die Heuchelei (f.), hypocrisy (this month's word for what the ban conceals about its own enforcer)
Die Verbindung zum Weg / Connection to the Walk
Enter Mulberry Street from the south, in Little Italy, and begin the Overture as the lights appear overhead. Walk north beneath them. Notice the outdoor heaters defying winter, the laughter spilling out past doorways, people choosing warmth over whatever rule might technically discourage them from gathering here tonight.
December starts not with restraint but with permission, this project's own frame insists, and nothing about that permission was formally issued by anyone standing at the top of a balcony. It was simply taken, collectively, by enough people at once that the taking itself became indistinguishable from having been granted all along. Walk slowly beneath the lights and notice how little authorization this particular joy actually required.
