Die Sprachreiniger

Description

Nowhere was 19th century language nationalism developing as rigorously and militantly as in Germany. And nowhere were the consequences so fatal. Karl-Heinz Göttert delivers with his historical study of the General German Language Association a bitter real satire from the poison cabinet of German cultural history - with a high current reference."Shame on every German who desecrates his sacred mother tongue!" Thus, in 1914, Otto Sarrazin railed against those who dared to use loan words borrowed from foreign languages. He was the chairman of the General German Language Association, which tried between 1886 and 1943, the German language of foreign influences. With much applause his members fought to remove words like "sauce" or "lady" from the vocabulary. This fight was combined with a chauvinism that led straight into xenophobia, welcomed the outbreak of war as a chance for German as a world language, and finally took up the racism of the Nazis. The Germanist Karl-Heinz Göttert has comprehensively researched the unsuccessful and ominous story of this dogmatic circle of intellectuals. His book shows how rational-minded educational citizens fall into nationalistic aberrations.

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