German

Course summary

‘You can have a lot of fun with the German language. You can tease it, play with it, invent huge words…then turn for relief to the pristine poems of Hölderlin or Heine, and remind yourself that German can attain heights of simplicity and beauty that make it, for many of us, a language of the gods.’ This analysis formed part of John Le Carré’s 2017 address to a prize-giving ceremony for the Oxford German Olympiad, a competition in which many OHS Germanists participate each year. The value of learning German, then, is not merely that of mastering a major European language but, as Le Carré notes, of ‘helping to balance the European argument, making it decent and keeping it civilised.’