The idiosyncrasy of national academic discourses in educational sciences and the flow of ideas between them is a topic that has inspired recent research, even though it has not been treated very exhaustively. This study presents some results of an investigation into German influences on the Spanish academic discourse in educational sciences between 1945 and 1990. Considering system theory as a tool, which makes it possible to widen the knowledge of educational science about itself, the research is based on the idea that all communications between scientists, who represent a certain discipline, constitute the core of a scientific discourse. In this perspective, scientific disciplines appear as social-communicative networks of knowledge production, which regulate themselves. The basic element of communication, which produces and reproduces the self-regulated context of the scientific discipline, is the publication. To that extent this study assumes that scientific reviews reflect truly the condition of a discipline and uses their analysis as a method to survey the possible influence of a national academic discourse on another, i.e. how certain ideas cross the boundaries of their own reference system. These assumptions constitute the background for the quantitative and qualitative analysis of two important Spanish reviews, the "Revista Espanola de Pedagogia" and the "Revista de Educacion". The register of all authors and titles of any article that contains the quotation of a German author, all quoted German authors and the titles of their works, all authors and titles related to German educational sciences and all reviews of books edited by German authors allows quantitative statements concerning the presence of German influences on Spanish academic discourse. Furthermore, the interpretation of some selected articles published by Spanish authors illustrates the quality of this reception. The analysis of these data shows as the most important result that the quantity and frequency of quotations of German authors in both Spanish reviews are positively related to the presence of a relatively small group of Spanish educationists among the authors of their articles. A prosopographic approach to these authors discovers that they share certain characteristics, such as for example high interest in German academic discourse, often due to longer stays at German universities. The interpretation of some selected articles identifies different types of reception of the German discourse. Besides a small number of articles that reflect the quoted ideas correctly in their context, there are a large number of studies that use the quotations of German literature only in order to strengthen their own point of view without regarding the original context of their sources. These cases shed light upon the structural differences between the German and Spanish academic discourse in educational sciences and illustrate the difficulties for the exchange of educational ideas between different national debates. (Contains 4 figures and 47 footnotes.)