I coudln't find out how to use the "lang: de" option (link) properly. That is, while tables are correctly named "Tabelle", the following settings:
---
title: "German quotation marks"
author: "will"
date: "24 Jänner 2018"
output: pdf_document
---
"Das ist sehr schön", sagte sie.
Produce this output:
whereas the following is needed: