Abstract This paper presents ongoing research on German as a foreign language in secondary education in the Netherlands. Specifically, it discusses the question what the language-ideological construct of proximity can tell us about people’s willingness to invest in German language education in this country. The paper is based on quantitative data about the number of German language learners in Dutch secondary education, as well as on qualitative data about the discourse surrounding German as a subject in Dutch secondary education. Through the perspective of proximity , the paper highlights three aspects of these data. First, it highlights the language-ideological nature of the historical separation of Dutch and German as two distinct language varieties. Second, it underlines the apparent foreignness of German language-culture as an explanation for the decline in the number of German language learners in the Netherlands. Third, it highlights the uneven distribution of the proportion of German language learners in the Netherlands, which may be explained by differences in the perceived proximity of Germanness in different parts of the country. Ultimately, the paper invites other researchers to consider the value of the notion of proximity for applied linguistics.