Q of the Week: Sayings/phrases?

[OldenBUA]

I think it's like this:

'Verlorene Haufen', i.e. a German (Landsknecht period) advance guard. Literally, that means 'Lost unit', like 'Enfants perdus', lost children.
In Dutch it would be 'Verloren hoop', where the hoop indeed has the meaning of unit, but also has the meaning of hope.
Translated to English (badly), you'd get the 'Forlorn Hope' idiom, where the original meaning is lost. 

The German for lost hope would be 'Verlorene Hoffnung'.

[hamsterking]

That makes sense to me