The Purpose of this Project

Klaus Groth is considered the most sig­ni­fi­cant Low Saxon (“Low German”) writer and language activist aside from Fritz Reu­ter. Out­side Northern Ger­many, Bel­gium and the Ne­ther­lands he tends to be bet­ter known for his ly­ric­al po­et­ry in (“High”) Ger­man and his friend­ship with the Ham­burg-born and -raised com­po­ser Jo­han­nes Brahms. On these pages I wish to in­tro­duce a se­lec­tion of Groth’s Low Saxon po­et­ry along with my Eng­lish ver­sions to people else­where in the world. Late­ly, this pre­sen­ta­tion has been at­trac­ting a fast in­creas­ing num­ber of vi­si­tors. This has pro­voked me to re­mo­del and re­de­co­rate it. Hope­ful­ly this will meet most­ly with ap­proval.

Groth’s Low Saxon works are not only of lin­gu­is­tic im­por­tance, but they also en­joy broad ap­peal in North­ern Ger­many and of­fer glimpses at po­pu­lar, folk-based gen­res and styles that came with the Low Saxon (Low German) re­vival move­ment of the 19th cen­tury. This re­vival move­ment was in­flu­enced by the con­cur­rent Eu­ro­pe­an Ro­man­tic Move­ment as a re­ac­tion to so­cial and en­vi­ron­mental im­pacts of the In­dustri­al Re­vo­lu­tion.