The analysis of the narrative story by a German writer Wilhelm Raabe established the significant role of reminiscences in this work. The main functions of reminiscences are specifying, aesthetic, expressive. Language pun is frequently used in the narrative story by W. Raabe. Reminiscences are its component. Their application allows representing the language portraits of the characters, showing their intellectual and cultural level, as well as their social status.

The article deals with the language features of the individual style of a German writer Wilhelm Raabe in his story „Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse”. The most frequent figures of speech used by the writer are repetition, separation, parenthesis, inversion, rhetoric question, appeal; they fulfil the artistic and aesthetic and pragmatic functions.