German

“ In my college reading I have become somewhat familiar with French and German literature. The German puts strength before beauty, and truth before convention, both in life and in literature. There is a vehement, sledge-hammer vigour about everything that he does. When he speaks, it is not to impress others, but because his heart would burst if he did not find an outlet for the thoughts that burn in his soul. ”

“ The German language acts as a blessing which, coming direct from the hand of God, sinks into the heart like a precious balm. To us, more than any other nation, is intrusted the true structure of human existence. ”

“ No where does nationality exhibit itself so strikingly, as in the conduct and bearing of the people who show you the way, in different cities. Your German is sententious and solemn as an elephant, he goes plodding along with his head down and his hands in his pockets, answering your questions with a sulky monosyllable, and seeming annoyed when not left to his own meditations. ”

“ Good, earnest, steady German men and countrymen, far from our spirit be such a lack of understanding, and far be such defilement from our language, which is formed to express the truth. Let us leave it to foreigners to burst into jubilation and amazement at every new phenomenon, to make a new standard of greatness every decade, to create new gods, and to speak blasphemies in order to please human beings. ”

“ There is the German nation of our day, the most aggressive in various fields of intellectual activity, a Hercules of scholarship, the most thoroughly trained and powerful—though its civilization marches to the noise of the hateful and barbarous drum. ”

“ What gives you alone of all German men and writers the special task, the vocation, and the right to assemble us and press your views upon us? Would not each one of the thousands of Germany’s men of letters have just as much right to it as you? ”

“ You have cherished everything German and stifled everything American. You have preached German, prayed German, read German, sung German. Every thought of your mind and every emotion of your heart through all these years has been German. Your body has been in America, but your life has been in Germany. You have influenced others who have been under your ministry to do the same thing. ”

“ What's foreign one can't always keep quite clear of,
For good things, oft, are not so near;
A German can't endure the French to see or hear of,
Yet drinks their wines with hearty cheer. ”

“ The wealth of the German language in expressions of feeling and general moods admits of no doubt. In what language do we meet with such a wealth of words expressing mental pain, from the most marked shadings down to the finest, until pain gently overlaps into pleasure? ”

“ Why should these few thousand people not have surrendered long ago this ‘useless remnant of an unschooled dialect,’ considering they learn at the same time Low and High German, or Low-German and Danish? ”

“ Why, you fools,
We'd do as we've always done before!
Do our duty! Take what comes
With laugh and jest, be it feast or fray—
But we're dandies—yes, for we'd rather die
Than sully the pride of our black and gray.
AFTER THE GERMAN. a sophomore soliloquy.
Blackboard, with ruler and rubber before me,
Chalk loosely held in my hand,
Sun-gilded motes in the air all around me,
Listlessly dreaming I stand.
What do I care for the problem I've written
In characters gracefully slight,
As the festal-robed beauties whose fairy feet flitted
Through the maze of the German last night! ”

“ For I know that even where you sit walled about by your flatterers, ramparted against the intrusion of any fresh breath of criticism, and protected by entanglements of barbed wire against any hint of doubt as to your god-like attributes—even there I know that my voice shall in time reach you, and you shall become aware that there is a German who dares to say of you what millions of Germans think and soon will dare to say. ”

“ I take as my example the three notorious words, Humanity, Popularity, and Liberality. When these words are used in speaking to a German who has learnt no language but his own they are to him nothing but a meaningless noise, which has no relationship of sound to remind him of anything he knows already and so takes him completely out of his circle of observation and beyond any observation possible to him. ”

“ I have spoken of German intellect. I have said that it is becoming coarser and shallower. Is that enough?—In reality something very different frightens me, and that is the ever steady decline of German earnestness, German profundity, and German passion in things intellectual. Not only intellectuality, but also pathos has altered. From time to time I come in touch with German universities; what an extraordinary atmosphere prevails among their scholars! ”

“ The German explorers of the universe have created a new school of natural philosophers; German historians are sifting the records of the past and bringing forth great political, social, and scientific revelations. In geography, ethnology, philology, and in all branches of science, men of powerful minds are at work, carrying the same enthusiasm into the world of fact that the poets have shown in the fairy-land of the imagination. ”

“ I have an idea that the waters will benefit me, at least it is something new: we penetrate at once into Germany. It is true, we do not understand German; but where better learn a language than in its native country?
“What’s in a name!”—You know the quotation: it applies to things known; to things unknown, a name is often everything: on me it has a powerful effect; and many hours of extreme pleasure have derived their zest simply from a name; and now a name is drawing me on—Germany—vast, unseen Germany! ”

“ What an extraordinary mixture the Germans are, brave, conceited, sentimental, prosaic, patriotic, and yet no people so soon lose their national characteristics, and become citizens of another country as Germans. ”

“ Our Fatherland can be proud to possess such a son—the greatest German of the twentieth century—who through his invention has brought us to a new [274] point in the development of the human race. It is not too much to say that we have to-day lived through one of the greatest moments in the evolution of human culture. I thank God, with all Germans, that he has considered our people worthy to name you one of us. Might it be permitted to us all, as it has been to you, to be able to say with pride in the evening of our life, that we had been successful in serving our dear Fatherland so fruitfully! ”

“ The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity. ”

“ A laurel we can show, with joyous heart, That on the German Pindus has grown green The sciences' most holy, hidden part The German genius dares to enter e'en, And, following the Briton and the Greek, A nobler glory now attempts to seek. ”

“ It is, indeed, scarcely possible to imagine two civilized countries, between which there is found a more striking difference in regard to language and moods of mind, than that which exists between Germany and modern England. ”

“ Do you talk, in the easy cant of the day, of German obscurity, extravagance, pedantry, and bad taste,—and will you blame this man, whose Greek, English, Italian, German mind steered so clear of these rocks and shoals, clearing, adjusting, and calming on each side, wherever he turned his prow? ”

“ Homer, Dante, Hafiz, Shakespeare, Aristotle, Bacon, Thucydides, Tacitus, Macaulay, Victor Hugo, Walter Scott, Tolstoy—the poetry, philosophy, science, history, fiction of all times and of all nations have naturally found a home in the German language, through the translations which are worthy of the originals by their fidelity, their strength and beauty. Indeed, the German language opens up to us more than any other the wealth of the literature of the whole world. ”

“ Why should the Germans of to-day be particularly subtle? A valiant Englishman looks in vain for "delicacy of perception" and dares to say that "in the German mind there does seem to be something splay, something blunt-edged, un-handy and infelicitous." ”

“ If German Kultur and the German spirit are to march victorious through the world, not to oppress other peoples, but to aid them in their own development, an essential preliminary will be the spread of the German language. ”

“ It is they whom we must thank—we, the immediate heirs of their soil, their language, and their way of thinking—for being Germans still, for being still borne along on the stream of original and independent life. ”

“ German heads, once let loose into the regions of ideal fantasy, be it political or philosophical, or the strange and unpractical mixture of both, seem as if they were not to be recalled to the earth and the realms of palpable truth by the lessons of experience, however strongly, and even terribly, inculcated. ”

“ Here had we been racking our brains and our bodies, trying to explain our wants to an uneducated German, while, all the time, there lay to our hands a book specially written and prepared to assist people out of the very difficulty into which we had fallen—a book carefully compiled with the express object of enabling English travellers who, like ourselves, only spoke German in a dilettante fashion, to make their modest requirements known throughout the Fatherland, and to get out of the country alive and uninjured. ”

“ My earnest hope is that every member of this illustrious race, while he may cherish the particular country of his birth as he does his home, will extend his devotion beyond its narrow limits, and exult in the name of a German, and recognize the claim of Germany to the love and affection and patriotic exertions of all her sons. ”

“ The English are exalted and melancholy, cold and unnatural. The German women are tender and sweet, but colorless and monotonous. The French are spirituelle, elegant, and voluptuous, but are false at heart. ”

“ And if I have not also shown that German is a harassing and infuriating study, my execution has been at fault, and not my intent. I heard lately of a worn and sorely tried American student who used to fly to a certain German word for relief when he could bear up under his aggravations no longer—the only word whose sound was sweet and precious to his ear and healing to his lacerated spirit. This was the word damit. It was only the sound that helped him, not the meaning; [3] ”

“ Powerful, indeed, are the intellectual heroes which the Germanic stock, through the grace of God, has produced, from the time of Boniface and Walter von der Vogelweide to Goethe and Schiller; and they have become a light and blessing to all humanity. Their influence was exerted universally, and yet they were strictly Germans, set apart by themselves; that is, personalities, men. We need them to-day more than ever. May you strive to become such as they were! ”

“ But the German language, German literature, and the Germans! The writer has already stated his opinion with respect to German; he does not speak from ignorance or prejudice; he has heard German spoken, and many other languages. German literature! he does not speak from ignorance; he has read that and many a literature, and he repeats—p. 328however, he acknowledges that there is one fine poem in the German language; that poem is the ‘Oberon’—a poem, by-the-by, ignored by the Germans—a speaking fact—and, of course, by the Anglo-Germanists. ”

“ That is the sum and substance of the German public creed and the German private character—and now we fairly may say we know them both. The German is not a sportsman—he does not know the meaning of that word. ”

“ The German, indeed, it essentially the language of poetry; while, were I called upon to assign to the other idioms of Europe the department for which each was best fitted, I should indicate the English for oratory, the French for conversation, the Italian for song, and the Spanish for love—that is, the expression of the tender passion.
More than one generation has passed away since that which first wept over the sufferings of the youthful Werther (1774) , or imitated his eccentricities. It is a work of true genius, instinct with profound pathos and energic passion. ”

“ In investigating a German word, we cannot and must not stop at Middle High German, the only earlier stage of our mother-tongue with which every educated man has some acquaintance; and even Old High German, the oldest literary period of German, is not, except in a very few cases, sufficient for the needs of the etymologist who knows how to appreciate the importance of philology in acquiring a knowledge of the history of the German language. ”

“ Is it ‘Deutschland über Alles’ for us, or is it England über Deutschland? Answer me that! I speak to you now: I do not just ask you to listen while I talk to myself. If the worst comes to the worst what are we? What do we stand for? Are you going to be English, or are you going to be German? If German, let us not pause: let us walk under the limes in Berlin.... ”

“ Those who come after you will accustom themselves to other ideas, will adopt alien forms and another way of conducting life and affairs; and how long will it be then before there is no one living who has seen or heard of Germans? ”

“ Therefore, as I speak only of Germans in general, I shall proclaim that many things concern us which do not apply in the first instance to those assembled here, just as I shall pronounce as the concern of all Germans other things which apply in the first place only to us. ”