This contribution portrays J.J.A.A. Frantzen (1853-1923), the first Germanic scholar with a chair in Utrecht, as a teacher and professor of German. The author reaches the conclusion that even after a century the relation between philology and language teaching is still problematic. To counter this he advocates linguistic research into the learning processes involved in language teaching as an autonomous academic approach

This essay surveys the linguistic publications of J.J.A.A. Frantzen in Dutch periodicals. Frantzen (1853-1923) was the first Germanic scholar with a chair at the University of Utrecht, appointed in 1908. Central are the Umlaut and the Konjunktiv as phenomena of the historically oriented German grammar