This seminar paper, written in 1984, examines the divergent conceptions of 'Sprachkultur' (language culture) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany against the background of their differing political systems and world-views. As a contemporary document of German division, the paper offers insights into the ideologically shaped linguistics of the Cold War. The study first analyses the fundamental differences between the Marxist-Leninist and the pluralist-liberal understandings of politics, scholarship, and culture. Taking as its starting point the concept of the Prague School of linguistics, which in the 1930s developed the first scholarly grounded programme of language culture, it traces the later instrumentalisation of this approach in the linguistics of the GDR. Whereas in the GDR 'Sprachkultur' served as a state educational programme for the formation of the 'socialist personality', in the Federal Republic a descriptive, pluralist approach emerged, one that recognises differing linguistic norms as of equal worth. The paper shows how linguistic concepts are shaped by their social framework conditions, and argues that, despite the shared socio-economic structures of modern industrial societies, the differing political systems gave rise to fundamentally distinct conceptions of language cultivation and language policy. As a historical document, the paper vividly attests to the communicative conflicts and ideological barriers that impeded scholarly exchange between East and West. This is a translation of the original paper published under doi 10.5281/zenodo.21925229. It was generated with the aid of Claude.Ai.