The goal
I wanted to have German quotes: „…“ instead of English quotes: “…” when transpiling from markdown to PDF.

The problem
When transpiling with pandoc and a defaults file from markdown to pdf, csquotes: true in the defaults has no effect. However if put it in the metadata file it works. The language setting lang: de-De in the metadata file seems to have no effect. The from: markdown+smart extension has no effect.

Expected behavior
Localized quotes and in this case German quotes should be controlled via the lang: variable in the metadata file (solely in the best case) and/or via the csquotes: or an alternative variable in the defaults file (if necessary). The variable csquotes: loads the corresponding LaTeX package and defines a specific property of the typography of the LaTeX file and resulting PDF and hence should not be managed as metadata.

Pandoc version
pandoc 3.1.11.1
Features: +server +lua
Scripting engine: Lua 5.4

OS
Arch Linux
TeXLive: texlive-full Version: 1:2024.20240331-1