Modern High German

“ 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. ”

“ Hülle, feminine, ‘envelop, covering, sheath,’ from Middle High German hülle, Old High German hulla (Gothic *hulja) , feminine, ‘cloak, kerchief, covering’; allied to the root hel, ‘to cover for concealment,’ in hehlen. — Modern High German in Hülle und Fülle meant originally ‘in food and clothing’; hence Hülle und Fülle was used to denote all the necessaries of life, finally the idea of superfluity was combined with the phrase. ”

“ There are here and there a few enthusiastic champions of dialects, particularly of Low-German, who still cherish a hope that High-German may be thrown back, and Low-German restored to its rights and former dominion. Yet, whatever may be thought of the relative excellences of High and Low German,—and in several points, no doubt, Low-German has the advantage of High-German,—yet, practically, the battle between the two is decided, and cannot now be renewed. The national language of Germany, whether in the South or the North, will always be the German of Luther, Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe. ”

“ With Luther, the literary language of Germany became New High-German. A change of language invariably betokens a change in the social constitution of a country. In Germany, at the time of the Reformation, the change of language marks the rise of a new aristocracy, which is henceforth to reside in the universities. Literature leaves its former homes. ”

“ 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? ”

“ As it is, you have suffered enough on account of the wild German ideals you luckily only partly believed in: for what the German thinker wrote on patient paper in his study, you always had to write the whole world over on tender human skins, black and yellow skins, enveloping ungrateful beings who sometimes had no very high esteem for the depth and beauty of German philosophy. ”

“ The students are a means of perpetuating these notions. The young German is essentially romantic. A poet and a patriot, his dreams are of the greatness of his Fatherland, of its high mission among the nations of Europe ”

“ It is not surprising, then, that the nature of our spiritual being, and the invigorating and regenerating influences of the pursuit of knowledge and virtue, should be more often the theme of ancient than of modern philosophers. And yet the moralist, the philosopher and the poet, would each derive both assistance and delight from the too much neglected works of these noble old masters. We have seen the wonderful [p. 233] revival of letters in Germany in modern times ascribed to the study of the Platonists,—with what truth our knowledge of German literature will not permit us to say. ”

“ It needs a profound intelligence, and a mind strong enough to resist the enervating influence of the Modern School, to grasp, wholly, the true spirit of the old German masters, and to penetrate completely into the significance of their pictures. ”

“ For he who has sinned against the German language has desecrated the mystery of all our Germanity. Throughout all the confusion and the changes of races and of customs, the German language alone, as though possessed of some supernatural charm, has saved herself; and with her own salvation she has wrought that of the spirit of Germany. She alone holds the warrant for this spirit in future ages, provided she be not destroyed at the sacrilegious hands of the modern world. ”

“ The linguists and philosophers of Germany, her historians and men of letters, her professors and savans, have come from the ranks of that stiller and more numerous class whom the stranger will never notice: for their triennium is spent mostly in the lecture-room or at home; and their conviviality—for there are neither disciples nor apostles of temperance in this beer-drinking land—is of a nature not to divert them from their earnest pursuits.
Truth and earnestness are the distinguishing traits of the German character ”

“ And, finally, even when truth is not intentionally concealed, the pursuer of idealism will pass his days in false and useless trains of thought, pluming himself, all the while, upon his superiority therein to the rest of mankind. A modern German, without either invention or sense, seeing a rapid in a river, will immediately devote the remainder of the day to the composition of dialogues between amorous water nymphs and unhappy mariners ”

“ By whatever errors the history of Germany's pedagogical theories and practices may be fringed, however one-sided this or that emphasis may have been; in the steady pursuit of the one ideal, that education of whatever grade or character to be—education shall focus in living man and not in tradition and books, from the days of the Renaissance to this hour, German masters have led the van. The wonderful philology of Germany, child of the Renaissance and the Reformation, was fruit of the passion to learn to know man and to be man. ”

“ What preserves, in its original strength and grandeur, the rich and massy arch of German literature? The incomparable exertions of the German student. The German student! whose mind knows no other commune than the thoughts of the mighty dead. The German student! who knows the power and majesty of truth, and thinks no care, nor labor, too great to possess it; and whose intellectual eye takes in all that is lovely and sublime in creation. The universities of Germany are unequalled in the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ LITERARY HISTORY AND CRITICISM.—Modern German literature is singularly rich in this department. In the Republic of Letters, German students have found the liberty they could not enjoy in actual life, and this cause has promoted investigation in ancient and modern literature. Poets, historians, philosophers, and other writers have been studied and criticised, not merely as authors, but with especial reference to their respective contributions to the progress of ideas and the movements of society. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I quote from the letter [Pg 90] of an American parent recently living in Berlin, who placed his children in a school there: "The text books were unique. I suppose there was not in any book of physics or chemistry that they studied an admission that a citizen of some other country had taken any forward step; every step was by some line of argument assigned to a German. As you might expect, the history of the modern world is the work of German Heroes. ”

“ With a predominant sentiment for beauty, and an eminent talent for imitation, he sported through every department of literature, and floated perpetually with the current of the intellectual tendency of the age. By such men the German language was speedily advanced to its point of perfection ”

“ Nowadays the Germans are bored by intellect, they mistrust intellect; politics have swallowed up all earnestness for really intellectual things—"Germany, Germany above all." [1] I fear this was the death-blow to German philosophy. "Are there any German philosophers? Are there any German poets? Are there any good German books?" ”

“ Animosity of the Germans against Enlightenment.— Let us consider what the Germans of the earlier portion of our century contributed to the general culture by means of their intellectual work, and take first the German philosophers: they reverted to the first and oldest stage of speculation, for they were satisfied with conceptions instead of explanations, like unto the thinkers of dreamy ages,—thus, & pre-scientific mode of philosophy was resuscitated by them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Germany, there is one speech for the learned, and another for the masses, to that extent, that, it is said, no sentiment or phrase from the works of any great German writer is ever heard among the lower classes. ”

“ If a professor of history in a German university expressed any opinion in his academic lectures unfavourable to modern Germany, he would be immediately denunziert to the State authorities by his own students. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I had the feeling that, had I been born in England, I would rather be dead than not sit among and speak among them. I thought of my own country, and was thankful that I could thank God for being a German and being myself. But I felt, also, that we are all children on this field in comparison with the English; how much they, with their discipline of mind, body, and heart, can effect even with but moderate genius, and even with talent alone! I drank in every word from the lips of the speakers, even those I disliked.” More than a year was thus spent in England in the very fullness of life. ”

“ If, on the other hand, you bestir yourselves and play the man, you will continue in a tolerable and honourable existence, and you will see growing up among and around you a generation that will be the promise for you and for the Germans of most illustrious renown. You will see in spirit the German name rising by means of this generation to be the most glorious among all peoples; you will see this nation the regenerator and re-creator of the world. ”

“ Since the philosophers have accomplished their mission by establishing principles, and the poets have made themselves intelligible to the masses, the German mind has entered upon the exploration of all spheres of learning, and is making new and great advances in the solution of the problems of humanity. The most eminent scholars, no longer pursuing their studies as a matter of art or taste, are inspired by the noble desire of diffusing knowledge and benefiting their fellow-beings ”

“ If, therefore, the besetting fault of the teacher of history in German is prolixity, that of the American teacher is tediousness. The German method is that of primitive man, where the legends of the tribe are handed down from father to son by word of mouth; the American presentation of history is modern, where all the resources of scholarship and the advantages of the printing press are utilized. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Germany can remain great only by what has made her great—by simplicity of manners, contentment, industry, honesty, high ideals, contempt of luxury, of display, and of vain-glory. “Non propter vitam vivendi perdere causas,”— “Not for the sake of life to lose the real objects of life,” this must be our watchword forever, and the causæ vitæ, the highest objects of life, are for us to-day, and will, I trust, remain for coming generations the same as they were in the days of Lessing, of Kant, of Schiller, and of Humboldt. ”

“ It is quite plain, too, that an investigation of the latter kind may be completed sooner and more easily than one of the former.
So we may say that genius in foreign lands will strew with flowers the well-trodden military roads of antiquity, and weave a becoming robe for that wisdom of life which it will easily take for philosophy. The German spirit, on the other hand, will open up new shafts and bring the light of day into their abysses, and hurl up rocky masses of thoughts, out of which ages to come will build their dwellings. ”

“ Generations will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and works far more perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be produced in Germany; and yet the names of these two men will fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. And why? Because they humanized knowledge; because they broadened the basis of life and intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make reason and the will of God prevail. ”

“ 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." ”