Senator and Pensioner

"Mike Preiss" <mpreiss@sbcglobal.net> schrieb:

Pensioner means about what you would expect - someone on a pension. That
would very likely mean they were in government service, although they could
also have been a military officer. In the latter case, they could have been
pensioned due to injury or during the occasional downsizing after war.

I am not quite sure, if Mike Preiss had told all possibilities of using "Pensionaer". For example lots of "Pensionäre" lived aged in a "Pension", some sort of hotel. There seems to be a strong connection between the different namegivings, also these Pensions where then open for other people too. So it should be possible to name the inhabitants of such etablishment as also the leader of it an "Pensionär". Next possibility should have been to call a person a "Pensionär" in a more general sense than only coming out of official duties. The decisive moment of individual existence should be the absence of the necessity to do some work because of otherwise regularly income. That could be a pension of the state, but also private income as for example interest income or because of an contract selling ones business. In so far a "Pensionär" was equal to a "Rentier", what was the more common expression for someone retired from private business. So I would count with a bit fluently borders in use of the words. Things are as complicated as life. How should have - for example - one be called, who served very young to the military, made afterwards his money for twenty years in the parents business and then retired ? Could happen before being 40 years old.It depended then perhaps a bit on by what the heart beated for.

Best wishes

Hans Peter Albers, Bienenbüttel