Against the background of the 'crisis of the humanities' in the Weimar Republic, the present volume examines representative linguistic topics and concepts prevalent in the period in question. In so doing, it demonstrates how the radical change in the public perception of language problems after 1918 was involved in the moral decline of German academic research on modern languages and on comparative historical linguistics. This decline led to a serious loss of reputation and the establishment of a species of linguistic research informed by political motivations and geared almost exclusively to the rallying concept of Volk (people/nation/race). After 1933, however, the expectations placed in the new regime by this 'ethnicized' form of linguistic research were quickly and thoroughly disappointed.