Style/Language/German

This page outlines the capitalization rules for the German language. It forms part of the MusicBrainz CapitalizationStandard.

Auf Deutsch

Das erste Wort sollte groß geschrieben werden. Für den Rest gilt die übliche Groß- und Kleinschreibung.

In English

Capitalize the first word of a title, and use normal German capitalization rules for the rest of the title.

For non-German speakers the main rule of this document in short: Nouns and the first word of a sentence/title are capitalized, everything else is not. This is not completely correct, but appropriate most of the time.

As noted in the Wikipedia article on eszett, ß is the only European letter that does not have a corresponding capital letter. Since it never appears at the beginning of a word there is no need to convert ß to SS (or SZ) for capitalization. However, when correcting the capitalization of a title that is in all uppercase, it may be necessary to convert SS to ß (e.g. Rammstein's "WEISSES FLEISCH" should be capitalized as "Weißes Fleisch"). Please note that the use of ß has changed after the spelling reform.

If you need help you might contact one of the moderators with ModeratorLanguage/German or ask on the UsersMailingList.

Discussion

Two things to mention:

1. Capitalization of mix names.

• Divide mix thingies into two parts: the mix name and the mix words (e.g. in "Blub version" "Blub" would be the mix name and "version" the mix word). Then imho the mix words should always be in lower case as said in RemixStyle - if they can be both german or english words ("Version", "Radio", "Karaoke", "Mix", ... can be seen as german or english words).

2. Rechtschreibreform.

• Apply the old capitalization rules only if the record was released before the reform (1996-07-01) and/or the cover shows it in the old way (this for example touches the use of caps on "Du"/"Dich"/"Dein"/... which now are never capsed).

Opinions? If we can agree here I'd like to see this integrated in the guideline. :) --Shepard

3. Many "Right" Capitalizations in the last 1000 Years?!

• The new capitalization is mandatory since 1th August 2005. Between 1996 and 2005 both variants were correct. I suggest to follow the cover for the transition period. What I am missing is the information to use the capitalisation (same for orthography etc.) that was valid on the release date. (Think of classical entries)

--dekarl

• On the release date or on the recording date/original release date? For example I have seen a compilation of Nena songs which was released after 1996 but the songs were originally released before the reform and are written in the old way on the cover of the compilation. For this case I kept the old style. --Shepard