Old High German

“ 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 centripetal action with a German in old age, on the other hand, has a tendency to bend his form and draw it together, and to shrivel up his skin into innumerable wrinkles, so that his mouth often resembles the mouth of a purse drawn close together. This youthful appearance with aged English-speaking people reflects on their customs and their costume, which latter retains much of the tidiness of their younger days. ”

“ To be sure, in such a hard life as theirs, with no social surroundings, and grim death meeting them at every corner, there is nothing for it but to be as hard and tough as one's circumstances. But give me rather the German heart in the little old German village, with the small earnings and spendings, the narrow sphere of life and experience, and the great vintage of geniality which is laid up from youth to age, and handed down with the old wine from father to son. ”

“ The abundance of old books in existence shows that Germany had many learned men in the past; who have left carefully written manuscripts on oratory, poetry, natural philosophy, theology and all kinds of erudition. All down the Rhine you will find the walls and roofs of monasteries adorned with elegant epigrams which testify to German taste of old. To-day there are Germans who can translate the Greek classics into Latin; and if their style is not pure Ciceronian, let our detractors remember that styles change with the times. Mankind is always discontented, and prefers the old to the modern. ”

“ We older people have lived through darker times, when to a German, learning was the only refuge, the only comfort, the only pride; times when there was no Germany except in our recollection, and perhaps in our secret hopes. And those who have lived through those sadder days feel all the more deeply the blessings of the present. ”

“ THE ADVENTURE OF THE GERMAN STUDENT
On a stormy night, in the tempestuous times of the French revolution, a young German was returning to his lodgings, at a late hour, across the old part of Paris. The lightning gleamed, and the loud claps of thunder rattled through the lofty, narrow streets—but I should first tell you something about this young German.
Gottfried Wolfgang was a young man of good family. ”

“ We have traces of a certain amount of literature in Saxon or Low-German from that time onward through the Middle Ages up to the seventeenth century. But little only of that literature has been preserved; and, after the translation of the Bible by Luther into High-German, the fate of Low-German literature was sealed.
The literary language of Germany is, and has been ever since the days of Charlemagne, the High-German. It is spoken in various dialects all over Germany.168 [pg 179] Its history may be traced through three periods. The present, or New High-German period dates from Luther ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I am paying the penalty of being born a German: it is the nature of the Germans, that they bear heavily on every thing, that every thing bears heavily on them."
"O my friend!" cried Wilhelm, "could you cease to whet the dagger wherewith you are ever wounding me! Does nothing, then, remain for you? Are your youth, your form, your health, your talents, nothing? Having lost one blessing, without blame of yours, must you throw all the others after it? ”

“ If, on the other hand, you rouse yourselves, you will find, first of all, an enduring and honorable existence, and will behold a flourishing generation which promises to you and to the Germans the most glorious and lasting memory. Through the instrumentality of this new generation you will see in spirit the German name exalted to the most glorious among all nations; you will discern in this nation the regenerator and restorer of the world. ”

“ The German lets himself go, and thereby gazes with faithful, blue, empty German eyes--and other countries immediately confound him with his dressing-gown!--I meant to say that, let "German depth" be what it will--among ourselves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it--we shall do well to continue henceforth to honour its appearance and good name, and not barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a people of depth for Prussian "smartness," and Berlin wit and sand. ”

“ What you have in you now is a soft pulpy stuff: make what you will out of it,—elegant dolls and interesting idols—Richard Wagner's phrase will still hold good, 'The German is awkward and ungainly when he wishes to be polite; he is high above all others, when he begins to take fire.'” All the elegant people have reason to beware of this German fire ”

“ But they read their Bible in High-German; they write their newspapers in High-German, and it is in High-German that their children are taught, and their sermons preached in every town and in every village. It is but lately that Low-German has been taken up again by Schleswig-Holstein poets; and some of their poems, though intended originally for their own people only, have been read with delight, even by those who had to spell them out with the help of a dictionary and a grammar. This kind of homespun poetry is a sign of healthy national life. ”

“ Many of the Germans who have emigrated and are still emigrating to America belong to the well-educated classes, and some possess a very high culture. Our poet has therefore presented his typical German, with perfect propriety, in a variety of situations which would be imperceptible within which the the dialect necessarily moves, and has endowed him with character, even where the local colour is wanting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In power of endurance the Germans are surpassed by the Slavic race, in agility by the Latin. The prominent features of the German national character are honesty, faithfulness, valor, thoughtfulness, perseverance, and industry. ”

“ Of the separate and special means of once more raising the German spirit a very powerful one would be in our hands if we had a soul-stirring history of the Germans in that period—one that would become a book for the nation and for the people, just as the Bible and the hymn-book are now, until the time came when we ourselves had again achieved something worthy of record. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Western world ripe for Great Men in the early nineteenth century. The Germans as a highly competitive and envious people take the lead. The inflation of Schiller. The greatness of Goethe. Incredible dullness of “Elective Affinities,” of “Werther,” of “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.” The second part of “Faust” a tiresome muddle. Large pretentiousness of the man’s career. Resolve of the Germans to have a Great Fleet, a Great Empire, a Great Man. Difficulty in finding a suitable German for Greatening. Expansion of the Goethe legend. German efficiency brought to bear on the task. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many of the professors of the universities, who had also been volunteers in the war and had shared the enthusiasm of the students, joined them in their patriotic devotion and lent the authority of their names and writings to their aspirations of national political revival. Arndt’s famous national song, “Where is the German’s Fatherland?” with the reply, that the German fatherland embraces all the countries in which the German tongue is heard and in which German song rises heavenward, is the typical expression of that most enthusiastic period of German student-life. ”

“ What an honor to fight and die for the German Fatherland! The German is the foremost man in the world."
Yes. Yes. Poor devils! We know all about that. That is the song your masters taught you at school! For the King of Prussia and his nobility you work, you spy, you have your bones broken on the battle-field! They pay you with hollow phrases about the noble German, the German Fatherland, the German sky, the German Rhine; and when you sing false, with rough German slaps upon your German faces. ”

“ But I succeeded best of all in the French class of the Abbé d’Aulnoi, a French émigré, who had written a number of grammars, and wore a red wig, and jumped about very nervously when he recited his Art poetique and his Histoire Allemande. He was the only man in the whole gymnasium who taught German history. Still French has its difficulties, and to learn it there must be much quartering of troops, much drumming in, much apprendre par cœur, and above all, no one should be a bête allemande. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still their ancient virtues survive, and the German student is yet a type—one of the few remaining—-of the Europe of thirty years ago. Long may he remain so, say I; long may so interesting a land have its national good faith and brotherly affection rooted in the minds of its youth; long may the country of Schiller, of Wieland, and of Goethe possess the race of those who can appreciate their greatness, or strive to emulate their fame! ”

“ 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. ”