Excerpt from Modern German Prose: A Reader for Advanced Classes German is a difficult tongue. Teachers of modern lan guages would, I conceive, agree that the command of vocab ulary and idiom which can be acquired in French in three years demands four years in German. In the first two years little more can be accomplished I am speaking now of reading than the mastery of narrative prose and of the easier plays of the classic period. To the third year are usually allotted the major works of Lessing, Goethe and Schiller. I would not for a moment underrate the value of these as training in literature. They are stimulating and profitable in the highest degree. But if a student's formal study of German ends here, he is left quite unprepared for the very different task of coping with contemporary literature of a serious sort. When he attempts to read modern biog raphy, history, literary criticism, political and scientific dis eussions, topics that will chiefly engage his attention if he aims to appropriate the results of German thought and re search, he will find himself face to face with a new and difficult task. It is to bridge the gap between the German of Goethe and Schiller and that of the essay, review and editorial of to-day that this selection aims. Where a place can be found for it in the present crowded curriculum is a question for the in dividual teacher to solve. In many cases, in my opinion, it might wisely supplant the traditional third-year work, in others it might supplement it. In any case I feel sure that there are many teachers who will be glad to avail themselves of the opportunity to introduce their students to contempo rary German prose in its various aspects. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.