Germanization

“ 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. ”

“ Then we are going to Berlin to knock down all the ugly statues in the Sieges-Allee and smash the parvenu German Empire. Then we shall have a new age on classic lines. People will still use French and English and Italian because there is some beauty in those languages. But nobody outside of Germany will speak or read German. It is a barbarous tongue—shapeless and hideous—used by barbarians who gobble and snort when they talk. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But although, in the early days of German life, the Low and High German dialects were on terms of perfect equality, Low-German has fallen back in the race, while High-German has pressed forward with double speed. High-German has become the language of literature and good society. ”

“ If Gothic hallus, ‘rock,’ were allied, Old Icelandic hváll, hóll (Gothic *hwêlus) , masculine, ‘hill,’ might be compared, as well as Anglo-Saxon hyll, English hill. For an Aryan root kel, ‘to rise,’ compare Latin celsus, collis, and Lithuanian kalnas, ‘hill.’
Hälfte, feminine, ‘half’ Modern High German simply, abstract of halb. Introduced by Luther into the literary language from Middle German and Low German (a strictly High German word would end in b instead of f; compare Old Saxon half, under halb) ; the Teutonic type is probably halƀiþa?. In Upper German Halbteil (16th century) is used. ”

“ The American student should study German with a view to converse easily with his neighbor of that tongue and nationality. Living, as we do, neighbor to two Germanies, it is of no little commercial and social advantage to speak their language. One of these Germanies is established on our own soil, and we meet and mingle with it every day; the other, with the facilities for travel and communication, is as near to us as the remote parts of our own nation are to each other. ”

“ The language spoken at their court being High-German, the ascendency of that dialect may be said to date from their days, though it was not secured till the time of the Reformation, when the translation of the Bible by Luther put a firm and lasting stamp on what has since become the literary speech of Germany.
But language, even though deprived of literary cultivation, does not easily die. Though at present people write the same language all over Germany, the towns and villages teem everywhere with dialects, both High and Low. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a people made up of the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races, perhaps even with a preponderance of the pre-Aryan element as the "people of the centre" in every sense of the term, the Germans are more intangible, more ample, more contradictory, more unknown, more incalculable, more surprising, and even more terrifying than other peoples are to themselves:--they escape DEFINITION, and are thereby alone the despair of the French. It IS characteristic of the Germans that the question: "What is German?" never dies out among them. ”

“ Those German peoples who had continued to live outside of the Roman Empire, or who, during the invasions, had not settled far enough within its bounds to be led, like the Franks in Gaul, to adopt the tongue of those they had conquered, naturally adhered to the language they had always used, namely, the particular Germanic dialect which their forefathers had spoken for untold generations. From the various languages spoken by the German barbarians, modern German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic are derived. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The peasant brings grain only, and no money. Thus the word 'alone' or 'only' helps the word 'no' to become a complete, clear German statement. When you wish to speak German, you must not consult the letters in the Latin language, as these dunces are doing, but you must inquire of a mother how she talks to her children, of the children how they talk to each other on the street, of the common people on the market-place. Watch them how they frame their speech, and make your translation accordingly, and they will understand it and know that some one is speaking German to them. ”

“ The Deutschtum is sacred to the Germans. One cannot but have the deepest respect for the pride of Germans in their ancestry, in their language, in their church, and in the preservation of traditional customs. ”

“ If the study of dead languages can perfect a living language, then surely the German language should have become the world's model in every desirable attribute, and German books should be taken as the world's standards of the finest lingual achievement. If the virtues of grinding in Latin and Greek are so great as they are alleged to be, German writing should be the type of lucidity, elegance, conciseness, and force of expression. ”

“ Although the literature of Germany is chiefly High-German, there are a few literary compositions, both ancient and modern, in the different spoken dialects of the country, sufficient to enable scholars to distinguish at least nine distinct grammatical settlements; in the Low-German branch, Gothic, Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, Frisian, and Dutch; in the High-German branch, Thuringian, Frankish, Bavarian, and Alemannish. ”

“ In truth, no writing is harder to read than the German. In his intercourse with the foreigner, the brother Boche, it is true, not infrequently employs the Latin character. But, for communications among themselves, the Germans continue to use their own damnable hieroglyphics. I have often wondered to see how the most unintelligent German will read off with ease a closely written scrawl of German handwriting looking as though a spider, after taking an ink-bath, had jazzed up and down the page. ”

“ The dialects of the Deutsche Sprache, the German language, are the Ober Deutsche and Nieder Deutsche, Upper German and Low German: from the former dialect has, in course of time, proceeded the Hoch Deutsche Sprache, the High German language, now used exclusively as the book language by the more educated classes throughout Germany. ”

“ German was to become the language of central Europe. Interposed between the territories of Romanic and Slavic languages, the area of German speech occupies a magnificently commanding position. Originally the language spoken west of the Elbe and Saale rivers, it had advanced considerably to the east in the first century of the Christian era. The imposition of Teutonic language on Slavic populations is one of the results of this ancient expansion of Germanic peoples. During the past thousand years very little change in the distribution of the main German dialects is believed to have taken place. ”

“ No other people pay such loud compliments to themselves, and pay them with such unashamed diligence. They decorate themselves with compliments as a savage decorates himself with bits of broken glass. A philosopher like Hegel set the example of proclaiming in German accents and to German ears the ‘godlike glory’ of the German nation. The ‘spiritual nature of Germanism,’ we are assured seven days a week by German editors, makes it the standard-bearer of Christian Europe. ”

“ Local peculiarities are still to be met with, as is to be seen in the modern German literature that emanates from Switzerland or Austria.
But this unity, imperfect as it is, is limited to the literary language. The differences are much more sharply accentuated in the Umgangssprache, [27] whereby we understand the language as it is spoken by educated people throughout Germany; this is not only the case with regard to pronunciation, although it is naturally most noticeable here, but also with regard to the choice of words and the construction of sentences. ”

“ Geographical contours, economic forces, the trend of invention and social development, point to a unification of all Western Europe, but they certainly do not point to its Germanisation. I have already given reasons for anticipating that the French language may not only hold its own, but prevail against German in Western Europe. And there are certain other obstacles in the way even of the union of indisputable Germans. One element in Germany's present efficiency must become more and more of an encumbrance as the years pass. ”

“ Be this as it may, it is to our German governesses that we owe the power of understanding Germany, more than to German literature. For the literature itself requires some introduction of mood for its romantic, homely, sentimental, essentially German qualities; the mere Anglo-Saxon or Latin being, methinks, incapable of caring at once for Wilhelm Meister, or Siebennkäs, or Götz, or the manifold lyric of Forest and Millstream. ”

“ The subject of Germany during that closing period of the Middle Ages, characterized by what is known as the revival of learning and the Reformation, is so important for an understanding of later German history and the especial characteristics of the German culture of later times, that we propose, even at the risk of wearying some readers, to recapitulate in as short a space as possible, compatible with clearness, the leading conditions of the times—conditions which, directly or indirectly, have moulded the whole subsequent course of German development. ”

“ While France and Germany continued subject to the same monarch, German was the language of the court, and generally used in every class of society. When the treaty of Verdun divided the territories of Charlemagne, the Romande, or Romançe language, a corruption of the Latin, superseded the German in every part of France: it was insensibly refined into the modern French, but the German continued to be the only language spoken in Germany. ”

“ For German literature is not only exceedingly rich in original works in every branch of mental production, which, owing to the imperfection of the translation into other languages, cannot be fully enjoyed except when read in German, but it contains, in its superior translations, an almost complete treasury of all the literature of the world and of all ages, ancient as well as modern. ”

“ We have been taught the German language at home so efficiently that in time we were able to tell the Germans plainly in their own tongue what we thought of them, and then we left our oppressed native land to seek the land of liberty. ”

“ But I have heard the same opinion expressed by other, and among them very competent, persons, who had been brought up in the English language, and had then acquired a very thorough knowledge of German. It is a remarkable fact that, although the German language seems to be stiff and obstinate in its syntactic construction, German literature possesses a far greater wealth of translations of the highest merit than any other, while translations from the German, especially translations of German poetry, into any other modern language are, with very few exceptions, exceedingly imperfect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Had it been possible to that element of Germanism which formed our language, to give it that lightness, roundness, agreeable equivocalness, and at the same time precision and definiteness,—qualities which are called into full play in society by French audacity,—the conversation of the German would certainly have been the more satisfactory of the two, for he would never have neglected to connect the useful with the agreeable. ”

“ Hence the German, if only he makes use of all his advantages, can always be superior to the foreigner and understand him fully, even better than the foreigner understands himself, and can translate the foreigner to the fullest extent. On the other hand, the foreigner can never understand the true German without a thorough and extremely laborious study of the German language, and there is no doubt that he will leave what is genuinely German untranslated. ”

“ In the first place, the German has a means of investigating his living language more thoroughly by comparing it with the closed Latin language, which differs very widely from his own in the development of verbal images ”