Bismarck quotation?

Douglas G. Wilson douglas at NB.NET
Thu Apr 19 17:34:36 UTC 2001


When I was looking at Larry Horn's examples using "man", I thought of a
favorite quotation of my father's, supposedly from Bismarck: my father
expressed it thusly:

"The Bavarian is intermediate between the Austrian and Man."

I've found versions on the Web, slightly different, often with "a/the human
being" for "man". [I think it sounds better with "man", with a slight
grammatical incongruity to mark the "punchline".]

Does anyone have at his fingertips the original (presumably German) words
and/or source? [I can't swear that it isn't mistranslated, misattributed or
even apocryphal, but my father was educated in German and had some interest
in such things.]

--Doug Wilson



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