This is actually not a side note, but a very important point. The German translation simply replicates what Tolkien did: He specifically used elf/elves in orde

This is actually not a side note, but a very important point. The German translation simply replicates what Tolkien did: He specifically used elf/elves in order to differentiate his creatures from the shakespeare-esque tiny fairies, which were much closer to what Disney did in Peter Pan than to his vision. The correct English spelling at the time was elf/elfs, and he had to fight the proof readers and editors who constantly tried to correct his spelling. Interestingly though, dwarf/dwarves, while also wrong (the plural would have been dwarfs), was actually an accident, since his dwarves are not too different from previous folklore. Which explains why the German translation uses the standard "Zwerg" for them.