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This article attempts to explain how, since approximately the year 2000, the French concept of "discourse" has become a key concept in the German social sciences. While Michel Foucault is widely considered to be the major representative of French discourse analysis, he is not the only French theorist of the 1970s to enjoy a certain success on the German intellectual scene. Under the (American) label of 'post-structuralism' a number of theorists like Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Lacan as well as Baudrillard have been received in Germany where they challenged the interpretative and hermeneutic traditions of analysis. Despite the strong influence of some French theorists of discourse in German discourse analysis, the differences between the two fields seem to persist, which may be indicated, among others, by the comparatively less influential role played by linguistics in Germany.