20:29 Jul 19, 2010 

I argue in support of "Not.." and against "Tot.."? The latter would indeed be a highly unsual contraction of "Totpunkt" and "Notlage" and given the rather down-to-earth style of the letter excerpt it would be a very sudden change of style. Only if other fragments exhibit a love of wordplay would that tick the scales towards "Totlage". Plus the sentence does not read desperate, which would go along with "Tot..". Regards.
@Joanne Parker: it you still want to send a hi-res scan of that part feel free to do so under my ProZ send file address. Regards.

19:27 Jul 19, 2010 

Thanks for this refreshing post. Folks seem to have forgotten that this is a personal letter and not a user manual.
On another note: Trudchen and her husband would probably be delighted to see that our problems are much less 'deathly' than theirs where then. Have a wonderful day, everyone!

18:08 Jul 19, 2010 

There is always the possibility that people can and do make up their own words to create a specific effect. In this case just by cleverly changing an N into a T. We might call this poetic licence. "A deathly situation".

12:17 Jul 19, 2010 

Joanne,
There is nothing for it but to ask your friend whether the writer (Trudchen's husband) was an engineer or otherwise likely to know "Totlage", this piece of specialised vocabulary. If not,then go for Notlage and one of the answers which suppose this!

12:17 Jul 19, 2010 

@Steffen regarding question "how can you be so sure". Since this is all a matter of opinion and interpretation here, I humbly claim the right to be as sure as any other contributor. Totlage is 'bonified' (bonafide) and I added 'imo', meaning 'in my opinion'. Hope this helps.

07:57 Jul 19, 2010 

Hello everyone and thank you for such a lively discussion.
I have spent a long time working on this letter for a friend and I cannot confirm 100% that the term is Notlage rather than Totlage. The letter has other capital T's and the letter in this case is not formed exactly the same, but there are no other capital N's to compare it with.

If anyone would like a copy of the letter to see, I would be happy to scan it in and send it. That might help clear up the case. At the moment, I would tend to agree with Steffen and "Notlage".

07:30 Jul 19, 2010 

Have you got the source document in front of your eyes? "Totlage" would be very unusual German in this context.

03:01 Jul 19, 2010 

"Linderung" = alleviation (of something) - I would expect something that can be alleviated. If something is absolutely dead/destroyed/lost - it can't be alleviated. Can you confirm that it is indeed Totlage, not Notlage. "Linderung der Totlage" is very strange German and you won't find it used anywhere else. "Linderung der Notlage", on the other hand, makes much more sense. :)

22:08 Jul 18, 2010 

No scanning or spelling error, imo. Accurate description. "Totlage", nothing moves. Berlin 1947 was a moonscape of rubble, destruction and loss. All efforts seemed minimal, the weak and the old tried to move bricks by hand and clean up an unimaginable mess.

16:55 Jul 18, 2010 

Good thinking, Steffanovitch

15:33 Jul 18, 2010 

Has your document been scanned? If so, "Totlage" might be the result of poor character recognition and actually mean "Notlage".

14:49 Jul 18, 2010 

your context certainly deals with relief from a deadlocked or standpat situation

the technical translation for ***Totlage***, which does not apply here, would be ***dead-point position / stagnation point***

sources:

dict.cc dictionary :: ***Totlage :: German-English translation - dict.cc German-English Dictionary: Translation for Totlage. ... Totlage {f} [z. B. eines Kolbens]: tech. dead-point position*** ...
www.dict.cc/german-english/Totlage.html -

Langenscheidt Routledge German Technical Dictionary: German-English - Routledge (Firm) - 2004 - Technology - 1839 pages
dead zone; 2. dead band (Regler); 3. ... deadwood (Schiffbau) ***Totlage f stagnation point*** ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0415335868...