The retranslations and later translations of Chinese philosophical, historical, and select literary texts and their adaptation into the national German literature during more than three centuries of cultural contingence between the Chinese and the German people reflect not only a protean image of China, but also one of European cultural and social politics in the German-speaking world. This article looks at the interrelations between cultural dispositions, philosophical movements, and academic developments during three centuries of ‘China-lore’ in Germany, and it seeks to come to an understanding of how these factors have influenced the establishment of a translation canon and the translation practice of Chinese texts into German.