ABSTRACT
In the 1640s many people in Germany felt that their language and culture were severely endangered, in particular by French. Foreign influence entered Germany from several quarters: young people of means and merchants travelled to France and Italy and returned with a desire to show off their newly acquired linguistic skills; soldiers from many countries fought on German territory during the Thirty Years War; German courts were looking to culturally and politically superior French models at a time when the homme à la mode was a new model in civil society. Moreover, in many fields older traditions maintained their influence, e.g. Latin in the language of the Church, administration, medicine and music (the Italian influence in the field of music did not emerge until the beginning of the seventeenth century), Italian and Spanish in the language of military theory and warfare. Together with a general sense of political fragmentation and weakness, the combined effect of all these factors led many people to demand some form of reaction.
