[tex-live] ngerman.sty - Undefined control sequence

[Helmut Jarausch]

Hi

I'm running TeXLive 2017 here on Gentoo.

I've observed the following problem

eplain
\input ngerman.sty


gives

entering extended mode
Babel <3.10> and hyphenation patterns for 12 language(s) loaded.
(/usr/share/texmf-dist/tex/generic/german/ngerman.sty v2.5e 1998-07-08
! Undefined control sequence.
\declare at robustcommand ...\csname \bbl at stripslash
                                                   #1 \endcsname  
}\expandafte...
l.255 \DeclareRobustCommand{\glqq}
                                   {%


The same occurs with german.sty

Many thanks for any hint on this one,
Helmut