Weren't they part of the same empire of Charlemagne? Why did their conflict last for centuries? From the struggle for Burgundy to the Thirty Years' War to the Napoleonic Wars and the First and Second World Wars?
Aren't even the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm similar, except that the Brothers Grimm have more gruesome plots?
What are the differences between Germans and French people on a deep cultural level?
"The Austrian Hugo von Hofmannsthal said the same thing a hundred years later, comparing the Germans with the French. French literature, he said, is characterized by clarity of expression, pleasant sobriety, and disciplined thinking. French thinking is always directly connected with reality; there is nothing in the reality of a nation's political life that does not find its expression in literature. This cannot be said about Germany. The Germans have no spiritual tradition; what was once achieved in literature no longer works, for in German public life there is no trace of Goethe's influence. German literature was created exclusively by non-worldly titans, outcasts whose dramas are stuffed with their own egos, whose novels "reveal cosmic mysteries" and are more like fairy tales, theogonies, and confessions hidden under one cover. German science is arrogant and also disconnected from life. It is not people who serve science, but science that serves people. In the eyes of the Latin peoples, the Germans have always been slow-witted."
Aren't even the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm similar, except that the Brothers Grimm have more gruesome plots?
What are the differences between Germans and French people on a deep cultural level?
"The Austrian Hugo von Hofmannsthal said the same thing a hundred years later, comparing the Germans with the French. French literature, he said, is characterized by clarity of expression, pleasant sobriety, and disciplined thinking. French thinking is always directly connected with reality; there is nothing in the reality of a nation's political life that does not find its expression in literature. This cannot be said about Germany. The Germans have no spiritual tradition; what was once achieved in literature no longer works, for in German public life there is no trace of Goethe's influence. German literature was created exclusively by non-worldly titans, outcasts whose dramas are stuffed with their own egos, whose novels "reveal cosmic mysteries" and are more like fairy tales, theogonies, and confessions hidden under one cover. German science is arrogant and also disconnected from life. It is not people who serve science, but science that serves people. In the eyes of the Latin peoples, the Germans have always been slow-witted."
