Many will find it hardly compatible with the reserved, quiet manner of the astute, cool politician, that during a slight illness of my mother he read Fritz Reuter's novels aloud to her-he spoke plattdeutsch admirably-as dutifully as a son.
"The Complete Historical Romances of Georg Ebers"
Georg Ebers
I regard it as superfluous to expatiate on what is known to everybody, that in Germany the people speak a special language, called plattdeutsch, and that in the German part of Switzerland this plattdeutsch is especially far removed from the German language, whereas in Russia we frequently speak a bad language, while the masses always speak a good Russian, and that in Russia it will be more correct to put these words of Pestalozzi in the mouth of peasants speaking of the teachers.
"Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales"
Leo Tolstoy