From nodes as "German has horrible grammar" and "The Awful German Language" it is quite clear that English speakers have their difficulties with the German language. One of the problems is that there are horribly long words in german, such as Luftschiffkapitän or worse. However, there is quite a simple reason for these word constructions, which I will now explain.
In the English language, there are three ways of making one noun out of several (making compound words). The first is simply writing them in sequence as in:
space ship
The second is by connecting them with a
hyphen:
space-ship
The third way is to write the words together:
spaceship
In German, only two of these methods are allowed: writing the words together and connecting them with a hyphen. Writing nouns in sequence without seperating them with commas or hyphens produces a totally meaningless chain of words:
Raum Schiff doesn't mean anything.
Also, connecting the words using a hyphen sounds strange if it is done all the time. It is only done when introducing a new expression, as in:
Imagine a ship that does not go on water, but rather travels through the vast expanses of outer space. Such a space-ship has recently been constructed...
Or, in German:
Stelle dir ein Schiff vor das nicht auf dem Wasser fährt, sondern durch den Weltraum reist. Solch ein Raum-Schiff wurde kürzlich...
So most of the time it is necessary to write the words together if there is need of a compound word. This isn't always possible, however. You can't write abbreviations next to normal words:
CDUspendenskandal (
CDU contributions scandal) is an impossibility.
You have to write
CDU-Spendenskandal.
Also, please don't use words like Obersturmtruppenführer as an example for a German word. It is quite tactless, since Germans understandably don't like to be reminded of that time in their pasts. It also looks like you think that the Germans are a bunch of Nazis, and that is not funny at all, thank you very much.