Hey guys, German-language lit thread? I'm learning the language and I'd like to choose a book to read as a goal...

Hey guys, German-language lit thread? I'm learning the language and I'd like to choose a book to read as a goal. For example, my goal for Spanish is to read Don Quixote. What would be a good seminal work in German that I could choose as a fun milestone to aim for in my language study?

sorrows of young werther?
faust?

...

sensiblechuckle.gif

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

This. Though ''Der Zauberberg'' may be more fun due to Naptha vs. Settembrini

This. I am reading it right now actually.

Das Kapital

Can you please stop with these shitty language learning shill threads? I know how these always go, after a few posts someone will write a big comment saying how good "fluent in 3 months" is and then shills it for the entire thread saying how they learning Chinese in 3 month fluently and how it's an easy language.

Btw if you want to learn any language just read books in that language, watch news in that language and learn vocabulary, it's that easy.

Zettels Traum.

Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung von Grabbe.

Faust, Zweiter Teil

Are you mentally challenged? He just asked for books to read.

Kritik der reine Verkunft

Unendlicher Spaß

John you are the demons. You just wrote the post you feared.

Penguin do decent dual language books for German. You'll get exposure to some de ent post wwii writers.

Rose child porn

If I were to learn german, the endgame would be Faust and Goethe in general.

YOUR MOVE, GOETHE

Die Philosophie der Erlösung, mainly because there's no English translation, though there is a Spanish one.

Who are you? Are you the one guy here on lit who appreciates Arno Schmidt besides me?

Not him, but I think it was supposed to be a joke because Zettel's Draum is considered pretty fucking hard.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

unrelated but what do you think about Stefan Zweig?

Nope, not at all. It's just innovative. AND it was written by a fucking storage worker.

>Are you the one guy here on lit who appreciates Arno Schmidt besides me?

Incorrect.
Also, do you happen to know about Marianne Fritz? Tried to get people's interests piqued with a couple of threads, but to no avail. I feel there is a very hushed appreciation of people outside the Canon that don't get specific mention here on Veeky Forums for their obscurity, self-indulgence or such, like MacDiarmid, Brautigan, Vallejo or the troubadours, just to name some. Which is really a shame.

That one has been originally published in English. It is like learning Russian to read what Lenin wrote while in a library in Switzerland.

>the troubadours
Oh ja! Lass uns altprowonzalisch lernen! Dann lass machen Propaganda fur Sudfranzosen. Dann ist der Erbfeind entzwei!

If you are just beginning I suggest searching for Michel Thomas audio course on thepiratebay. Its the best thing to learn a foreign language. If you insist on using books only you can find pretty much everything translated in German.

Unfortunately, a couple families of the Semitic languages are my strong suit. I should learn German sometime, so versatile.

All the people saying faust 2 should fuck right of. It isn't exactly accessible for non-native speakers. Try "Die Verwandlung" or "Kleider machen Leute".

I named Faust 2 because OP wanted some kind of semi-endgame stuff.

Hölderlin's Hyperion

Hnnnnnng

Nonßens. Faust 2 ist nur auf Deutsch Unsinn. Ebenso machen Burns und Shakespeare nur auf Englisch oft keinen Sinn. Die Übersetzungen sind immer goldig. Sie kommen aus uralten Traditionen. Und wenn man über Generationen versucht das Selbe zu sagen, kommt irgendwann etwas schönes raus.
באמת?

Mischschell Tomma ist gut.

כּן, بس عربياتي اقوى

אתה ערבי?

Aye. Was taught I'vrit in middle school, but the thing is: everybody flunked out of it, so the school cut its losses and fired the poor man. My grasp is limited, but it's there.

Räuber Hotzenplotz

>reading for plotz

>a good seminal work in German
What better work of art could you have chosen than a man? Make it your aim to seduce a lovely and blond German.

Patrick Süskind - Das Parfüm
Theodor Storm - Der Schimmelreiter

>Sorrows Of Young Werther
That is God-Tier literature. Great stuff.

No, it is good, but definately not God tier. It's the Catcher in the Rye of its time.

>TFW no gf
>oh, well
>an hero
>any good

Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit, Karl Kraus

If only because this is what I am doing currently.

Goethe is probably a sensible milestone.

I suggest reading poetry, too, to get a sense of metaphor, idiom, and rhythm.

Don't get me wrong, it is good, and should definately be read within the context of its creation (Sturm und Drang), but it is not the greatest work in german literature.

Having Zettels Traum as a goal for your German reading skills is like choosing Finnegans Wake for English.

I don't think anyone wouldn't realize this.

Someone who hasn't heard of it and doesn't know German yet might. You were saying it's not hard to read and it is

>not choosing literally any book by Goethe as goal

Germany has lost it's language with the end of WW2. But even more so it has lost all ambition.

Well, probably I am. Arno was awesome and is horribly underrated. I´d also recommend Wollschlägers 'Herzgewächse', although it's pretty rare/expensive.

Isn't it awesome though? Look at the word "cnorpulend" he created. It's a combination of (at least) "Knorpel" (cartilage), "kopulieren" (making love) and "pulen" (picking) to describe the womans act to move through the hole in the fence. I will never finish the whole thing though.

sorrows of ¥ung waert-her is the most accessible goethe book. desu senpai

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Sounded more like "korpulent" (fat) to me.

We've got a decent amount of post-war literature. Most of them are swiss though.

Goethe is not Goethe. The guy wrote a huge amount. Naturally the quality will vary.