{"id":59540,"date":"2026-04-25T01:00:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T05:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=59540"},"modified":"2026-04-24T10:36:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T14:36:19","slug":"qotd-goethe-the-lost-german-master","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/04\/25\/qotd-goethe-the-lost-german-master\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Goethe, the lost German master"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This was the atmosphere in which I discovered Germany. It was a minor act of defiance to choose German instead of Latin for O-level, but with hindsight I was extremely fortunate to have the choice. There were two German teachers in my grammar school of just 600 pupils. Today, even the best state schools seldom offer the subject; not one of our four children has had the opportunity that I had to study German language and, especially, literature up to the high standard that was then expected at A-level. <\/p>\n

Today, the texts are almost all recent and appear to be chosen partly with the film of the book in mind. In particular, Goethe has disappeared from the syllabus, presumably because the language is considered too archaic. Yet I recall the immense pleasure and satisfaction of mastering a Goethe play \u2014 Egmont<\/em>. The story of the dashing Dutchman and his martial defiance of the sinister Duke of Alba, the courage of his beloved, Kl\u00e4rchen, who fantasises in song about how wonderful it would be to be a man and fight the Spaniards \u2014 “ein Gl\u00fcck sondergleichen ein Mannsbild zu sein<\/em>“. Somehow I even obtained an LP of Beethoven’s incidental music for Egmont<\/em>: seldom heard apart from the overture, but brilliantly evoking the grandeur of the drama.<\/p>\n

Like Homer, Dante and Shakespeare, Goethe belongs not just to German literature, but to world literature, Weltliteratur<\/em> \u2014 a term he coined. I am told that even in German Gymnasien<\/em>, Goethe is little studied now. He is certainly a rare bird in English schools \u2014 or even universities. It is tragic that educated people, including students of literature, so seldom encounter the greatest of Germans even in translation. We might get on better with Germany if we did.<\/p>\n

Daniel Johnson, “How I discovered Germany”, The Critic<\/em><\/a>, 2020-08-02.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was the atmosphere in which I discovered Germany. It was a minor act of defiance to choose German instead of Latin for O-level, but with hindsight I was extremely fortunate to have the choice. There were two German teachers in my grammar school of just 600 pupils. Today, even the best state schools seldom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1118,7,28,41],"tags":[1391,294,200,381],"class_list":["post-59540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-germany","category-history","category-media","category-quotations","tag-biography","tag-literature","tag-music","tag-theatre"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-fuk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59540"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102073,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59540\/revisions\/102073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}