Oh, we Brits didn't start pissing them off until they'd gone through Bismark.... but once we got into our stride - we did it a fair bit across the 20th Century, and even Brexit was mostly about pissing off the Germans.

I didn't realise that German was considered as an official language, though it does make sense. I think a lot of the changes from Latin to more direct words might be down to German pragmatism. Their word for pavement is gehweg (walk-way). They strike me as the sort of third generation group who when faced with a melting pot of language would call it a 'sidewalk'. :o)