On the sound of the German language. – We know where the German comes from that for a few centuries has been accepted as literary German. The Germans, with their reverence for everything that came from the court, have deliberately taken the chanceries as their model in everything they had to write, such as letters, documents, wills, and so forth. To write in the style of the chanceries was to write like the courts and the government – that was something distinguished compared to the German spoken in the city in which one happened to live. Eventually one drew the consequences and started to speak the way one wrote – thus one became even more discriminating in word formations, in the choice of words and phrases, and finally also in sound: one affected a courtly tone when speaking, and in the end the affectation became natural. Perhaps nothing like this has happened anywhere else: the triumph of written style over speech and the affectation and pomposity of a whole people as the foundation of a common language that is no longer a mere conjunction of dialects. I believe that the sound of the German language in the middle ages, and especially in the time after the middle ages, was deeply rustic and vulgar; in the last few centuries it has become a bit more refined, primarily because one felt compelled to imitate so many French, Italian, and Spanish sounds – particularly on the part of the German (and Austrian) nobility, which could in no way be content with the mother tongue. But despite this exercise, German must have sounded unbearably vulgar to Montaigne or even Racine; and to this day, in the mouth of travellers even in the midst of an Italian rabble, it sounds very coarse and hoarse, as if it originated in the back woods in smoky cabins and rude regions. I note today that among the former admirers of the chanceries a similar yearning for refinement of sound is spreading, and that the Germans are starting to obey a most peculiar ‘acoustic spell’ which could, in the long run, become a real danger to the German language – for one would seek in vain to find more abhorrent sounds in Europe. Something scornful, cold, indifferent, careless in one’s voice: that is what sounds ‘refined’ to Germans today – and I hear the good will to this refinement in the voices of young officials, teachers, women, merchants; even little girls are starting to imitate this officers’ German. For the officer – specifically the Prussian officer – is the inventor of these sounds: this same officer who as military man and specialist possesses that admirable tact of modesty which all Germans could stand to learn (including German professors and musicians!). But as soon as he speaks and moves, the German officer is the most immodest and distasteful figure in old Europe – quite unselfconsciously, without any doubt! Nor are the good Germans conscious of this when they admire him as the man of the foremost and most distinguished society and gladly let him ‘set the tone’. And so he does! First it is the sergeants and the noncommissioned officers who imitate and coarsen his tone. Just listen to the shouted commands that positively surround German cities with a roar now that they drill outside all the gates: what presumptuousness, what raging sense of authority, what scornful coldness reverberates from this roar! Are the Germans really supposed to be a musical people? It is certain that the Germans are becoming militarized in the sound of their language; it is probable that once they have got used to speaking in a military tone, they will eventually also start writing that way. For being used to certain sounds has a profound effect on character – one soon has the words and phrases, and finally also the thoughts that fit this sound! Maybe the Germans already write like officers; maybe I just read too little of what is written in Germany. But one thing I know more certainly: the public German proclamations that also reach other countries are inspired not by German music but by this new sound of a distasteful presumptuousness. In almost every speech of the foremost German statesman, and even when he lets himself be heard only through his imperial mouthpiece,73 is an accent that repels with revulsion the ear of a foreigner. But the Germans endure it – they endure themselves.