Here are a few Peanuts strips to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the “Tag der Deutschen Einheit“. Even before Schulz invented the incessant running gag about Snoopy being a WWI flying ace, he used German surprisingly often (much more than any other foreign language, Spanish included). The strip shown above was published in 1953; the title mentioned in the second panel is a piece by Bach, called “Sheep May Safely Graze“. The other four strips below are all from a story arc that appeared in March 1979.
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Although the word “Fräulein” is technically correct “textbook” German for “miss”, it has now become severely outdated, and is no longer used in normal German conversation, except occasionally for sarcastic emphasis. The standard German form of address for a woman (spoken or written) is now “Frau“, regardless of marital status; girls (and teenagers) are referred to as “Mädchen“.
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Snoopy should not have addressed Lucy as “Deutscher“, because that is the masculine declination. The correct form would have been: “Sind Sie Deutsche?” Nevertheless, Lucy responding with “…all your arms” seems a little excessive: Snoopy has only two of them, so that “both” would have been sufficient.
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The pronouns in the second frame are “I, You, He, She“, each listed in each of the four German grammatical cases: Nominative, Genitive (possessive), Dative, and Accusative. This is the standard order used in all German grammar textbooks, in which the cases are usually numbered, and thus referred to as the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th “Fall” (“case”). Yes, Germans are notorious for excessive orderliness.
The 15 prepositions in the third frame can be translated into English as: from/out, except/outside(†), at/by, with, after, since, from, to, at/on, on(top), after/behind, in, next to, over, under. German prepositions are normally followed by the term declined in a particular “case”, but some prepositions can take either of two cases, depending on the situation, or possibly even a choice of three different cases (but only in very rare circumstances).
P.S. (†) The second word in the third panel is an error, it should have read “außer” (optionally capitalized as “AUSSER“). Schulz was famous for doing all of his own lettering, and in any case this strip predates the availability of handwritten computer fonts, so the most likely explanation for the missing letter is simply a slip of the pen, or possibly a transmission error from wherever he obtained the text.
P.P.S. I think it would have been funnier if Snoopy’s exclamation in the final panel had been “Ich ergebe mich!!“, but I admit that nobody reading an American newspaper would have understood the joke.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Also the 75th anniversary of the Peanuts comic strip.
Schulz served in WWII, including time in Germany — perhaps recalling his personal experience with the language and/or phrase books. It was fairly late in the strip’s run he’d specifically reference WWII, with Snoopy heading off to visit his buddy Bill Mauldin every Veteran’s Day to quaff a few root beers.
Kilby missed an error. The first word in the first panel of the first comic is misspelled. “Schafe” needs a c.
Schulz’ father was born in Germany (though moved to the U.S. before he could speak) so it’s likely he picked up some German from his grandparents.
A lot of his characters have German names–Van Pelt, Schroeder, Reichardt (Peppermint Patty). I think there are a bunch of others but I can’t remember them.
There vas drei Peanuts valking down the Straße…
Und vone vas assaulted…
–Peanut!
Ho, ho, ho, ho!
It was no match for Britain’s killer joke, Iark!
My hovercraft is full of eels.
This all gives me unpleasant flashbacks to when I took Germen in high school. It seemed like a good idea when I signed up… it wasn’t.
Trouble is, sheep are very dim. Once they get an idear into their heads, there’s no shiftin’ it.
A good point, beckoningchasm. I hadn’t noticed before.
The names you cited (well done on Peppermint Patty; that’s my favorite bit of Peanuts trivia) seem to be the main examples among the regular cast. There was a very brief character named Charlotte Braun, but that was more in the service of a one-off joke.
Violet’s last name is Gray; Franklin’s is Armstrong (named after Jump Start cartoonist Robb Armstrong). Shermy, Frieda, Patty, and Marcie don’t have established last names.
Shermy was named after Schulz’s high school friend, Sherman Plepler, so, in the absence of a last name for the character, ‘Shermy Plepler’ will suffice.
I thought Van Pelt would have been Dutch or something other than German.
Wikipedia tells me that although Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, his grandfather came from Mechelen which was in “Austrian Netherlands” and is now in Belgium. So I guess as borders shift, at times there can be “vans” or “vons” in some parts of Germany and Austria. But it was the Dutch who settled New York City so it’s mostly van Dyke, van Rensselaer and so on in that area.
And then there’s Lars von Trier, whose von comes from … sheer invention.
Mark in Boston’s last comment reminds me of a conversation with Robert (husband, not sure if ever mentioned him by name – and that is “Robert” never Bob or Rob or Bert or …).
He is a major fan of the Pennsylvania Dutch (no, really he is) and most of the trips we have taken over the decades have been to Lancaster, PA due to same. He found a modern Pennsylvania fellow online who is teaching Pennsylvania Dutch word by word weekly. One day he came to me and said something or other in PA Dutch. He was shocked when I answered him, in English, that I knew he what he had said. I explained to him that 2 years of German club in junior high combined with older relatives who speak Yiddish – and I could figure out what he was saying in PA Dutch. This never occurred to him that since the roots of the languages are similar I would be able to understand he anything he said in PA Dutch.
Now I get to watch the fellow also when Robert watches lots of informative shorts after we have weekly “Saturday Date Night” as we have had weekly since November 1974. Luckily the fellow is very entertaining.
Meryl A: Is the song “Johnny Schmoker” a true Pennsylvania Dutch song? That’s what I’ve heard.
Here it is, sung by Oswald the Rabbit; https://youtu.be/J8iWi-Hhw_0?si=IG-PvNSyYnJdReQQ