ABSTRACT
Oscar Wilde is well-known for his love of the French language. From their early childhood the Wilde boys had a French nanny and a German governess, so that they grew up speaking German as well as French. Wilde regularly read new German books, and even got his wife to learn German so that they could read new books in the language together. Wilde's work began to appear in Germany in 1891, and interest in the man and his work grew rapidly, particularly after the trials and more particularly after his death. So that What his friends in England failed to achieve, was accomplished in Germany by a group of critics, translators, theatre managers and publishers. The early Wilde reception in Germany and Austria went through several distinct phases, but in general his popularity in Germany grew 'almost in inverse proportion to its decline in Britain'. Wilde is very much a victim of the myth of the nineties.
