Fritz Mauthners 'Muttersprache und Vaterland'

Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923) describes "Mother Tongue and Fatherland" as an attempt to make clear the basic concepts of the idea of nationality. He exercises linguistic criticism of political buzzwords and criticises concepts such as people, nation, mother tongue and patriotism. Mauthner opposes the ideals of a pure language and a pure people, he rejects patriotism in other meanings than love for the "dialect of the homeland" and pleads against hatred and chauvinism arising from national sentiments. Originally published in 1920, the book counterbalances the reception of Mauthner as a narrow-minded German nationalist and allows us to explore the political dimension of his linguistic criticism like no other text in his complete works. The text of this new edition has been revised and is supplemented by an afterword by Thomas Hainscho.