K.-H. Ehlers, Der „Deutsche Gruß“ in Briefen. Zur historischen Soziolinguistik und Pragmatik eines verordneten Sprachgebrauchs, „Linguistik online“, 55, 2012, 5, pp. 3-19

[Autom. eng. transl.] In the historiographical study, Ehlers analyzes the timing and scope of the introduction of the "German Greetings" in 1933 by means of a circular in all areas of official and school communication. In doing so, the author concentrates on the written greeting behavior by evaluating postcards, dictionaries and a collection of 300 authentic letters from the years 1933 to 1939. In spite of the massive political pressure, a gradual change from the previously typical high regard formulations over the use of the "German greeting" (1934) to the prototypical final formula "Heil Hitler" (only 1937) is revealed. Under the premise that greetings establish communicative contacts, instil social communities, and show how communicators want to know the well-received sociality in a well-founded and well-structured way, Ehlers puts the violent attempt to create an egalitarian utopia of the Volksgemeinschaft into one the transition from the courtly courtesy of inequality to the bourgeois politeness of equality, which in the post-war period is finally concluded in standard formulations such as "Yours sincerely."