Language nation Germany: Quo vadis?

Web seminar Tuesday, 28 October 2025 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Speaker: Josef Kraus „The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.“ If this profound aphorism by Ludwig Wittgenstein applies to Germany as a language nation, and it does, then things are not looking good for this country, its culture and, above all, its young people. The German language is being marginalised in public, in the media, in politics and in academia. See the spread of „Denglish“! And it is being ideologised: see „gender language“! The education system is going along with it all. It does so by not opposing imported illiteracy and by drastically lowering the standards of linguistic correctness and literary education. And this in the country of (former!) poets and thinkers!

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web seminar
Tuesday, 28 October 2025
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Speaker: Josef Kraus

„The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.“ If this profound aphorism by Ludwig Wittgenstein applies to Germany as a linguistic nation, and it does, then this country, its culture and, above all, its young people are in a bad way. The German language is being marginalised in public, in the media, in politics and in academia. Just look at the spread of „Denglish“! And it is being ideologised: just look at „gender-neutral language“! The education system is going along with it all. It is doing so by failing to counter imported illiteracy and by drastically lowering its standards of linguistic correctness and literary education. And this in the land of (former!) poets and thinkers!

About the speaker: Josef Kraus, Born in 1949, he was honorary president of the German Teachers' Association, which has 160,000 members, for thirty years until 2017. In 2018, he was awarded the German Language Prize. As early as the debate on spelling reform, he drew attention to the precarious state of German education, and subsequently did so with increasing urgency.
As a secondary school teacher and school psychologist, he was headmaster of a Bavarian secondary school from 1995 to 2015.
Kraus is active in a variety of journalistic fields. His book Helikopter-Eltern (Helicopter Parents) and his polemic Wie man eine Bildungsnation an die Wand fährt (How to Ruin an Education Nation) are bestsellers. His latest work, Im Rausch der Dekadenz (In the Rush of Decadence), was published in autumn 2024.

The conference fee is €15.

Registration via https://erasmus-stiftung.de/angebote/
After submitting the form, you will receive an automatic confirmation of receipt and, if places are still available, a prompt confirmation of your participation.
If your application is successful, you will receive a further email two days in advance containing a link to easily dial into a Zoom meeting.
To participate, you will need a computer with speakers, a microphone and a camera (webcam).