In this paper, Betten looks closely at non-standard syntax in modern German prose writing, a phenomenon that is all the more worth noting, as it took some hundred years for German literary prose to get to the point where style experimentation became an issue. But even then, in the first half of the twentieth century it was the traditional art of refi ned normative language use which Thomas Mann’s prose style represented once again, though probably for the last time, in its ultimate perfection.