To the scandal of science and the shame of our enlightened century, grammars of the German language are still floating around in our schools, which should be called by their proper name "Buchstabendinger." They fall into three classes: 1) those that set up bare rules and leave it with the remark, "That's the way it's called, that's the way the language wants to be used"; 2) those that also have the old rule content but try to explain and defend the language usage with remarks; 3) textbooks that have become fashionable in more recent times, which aim to be written according to the Socratic-heuristic method and, for pity's sake, dig up wisdom that one doesn't understand anything about. This book is an unchanged reprint of the original edition of 1869, which has long been out of print.