In my quest to find good read-alouds online, I stumbled across this site. It’s similar to the vorleser.net I found a few weeks ago, but it seems to have a lot more German literature. Again, it’s great because you can read and listen to the text at the same time–great for language learners. I’ve been listening to Theodor Fontane’s Frau Jenny Treibel.
Erich Kästner (1899-1974) was an author of books for children and for adults. You may know his Konferenz der Tiere or Emil und die Detektive or Das doppelte Lottchen—the model for the movie The Parent Trap! Als ich ein kleiner Junge war is pitched to kids, but it’s a lovely read for anyone. My favorite section is an especially poignant passage about the destruction of Dresden, Kästner’s home town, in World War II.
I’ve been looking for sources for audio books in German, and I came across the vorleser.net site this week. So far I’ve listened to a fairy tale by Wilhelm Hauff (Kalif Storch) and a novelle by Wilhelm Raabe, Else von der Tanne. It’s nice to be able to listen to someone reading the stories out loud, and they seem to have a good selection of classics.
I did a lot of reading this summer in German, primarily books from our Free Reading Collection in the German House that I hadn’t read yet. My favorite author of the bunch was Otfried Preussler, and my favorite of his Der kleine Wassermann. There’s no exciting plot here, just a series of adventures by the fascinating little Wassermann. It’s adorable, and Preussler’s creativity and well-crafted writing style really stand out.
I just found this great blog post on the German character esszet. The most recent spelling reform changed the rules for when to use the esszet without taking it away entirely. Although the little character makes our lives more complicated, I’m glad they kept it, because it’s such a unique feature of German–and it’s kind of beautiful, as this blog post will show you!
http://typefoundry.blogspot.com/2008/01/esszett-or.html
This narrative by Swiss author Adalbert Stifter (published in 1853) is a lovely little Christmas story about two children lost in the mountains. The plot isn’t earth-shattering–it’s basically a rescue story–but the descriptive language and the detailed structure of the sentences and paragraphs Stifter creates make this book an absolute knock-out. If you’re a fan of Christmas, you should definitely read at least the first few pages, in which Stifter gives a beautiful description of the Christmas traditions in the small village where the children live.
You can read the whole thing here at the Projekt Gutenberg site:
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/214/1
Today in my German 204 classes we talked about etymologies–the history of words.
We have been discussing reading strategies–what to do when you encounter an unknown word in a text (other than breaking off to look it up in the dictionary). Some of the strategies have been 1) looking at the pictures, 2) guessing from the context, and 3) realizing that not every word is key to the basic meaning of the text.
The strategy we talked about today was discovering what are called cognates–English words that are related to their German counterparts. Think of der Finger – finger; die Universität – university; der Apfel – apple; der Fuchs – fox. I have created a website that takes you through a short six-lesson tutorial on German Etymologies. Learning some simple rules of thumb can help you increase your ability to guess at the meanings of new words. And it’s fun, too! Check it out at
http://faculty.valpo.edu/jbjorns1/German_Etymologies.htm.
This week I watched Michael Haneke’s film Das weisse Band for the first time. I watched it twice, actually–once on my own and once with my husband. There were so many questions that were left open at the end that I really wanted to go back and see the whole thing through again. This is a beautifully composed film–everything in stark black and white, each shot beautifully framed, every actor fascinating to watch. And the plot is engrossing. The story takes place in turn-of-the century northern Germany, in a town where strange and disturbing things start to happen and no one can quite get to the bottom of it all. Although part of me was frustrated that even after a second viewing, I didn’t have complete clarity about exactly what happened, I loved how the film captured my attention and gave me so much to think about.
After watching the film a second time, I discussed it off and on for several hours with my husband, read a bunch of comments on imdb.com, and listened to some Haneke interviews on youtube. In the interviews, Haneke explains that he purposely leaves things open for the viewer so that we will be left pondering the film for quite a while after seeing it. If that’s Haneke’s goal, he certainly had success in my case!
If you’re an intermediate student up for a bit of a reading challenge, you might try my favorite German book of all time: Bronsteins Kinder by Jurek Becker. Becker (an East German Jewish writer) is more famous for his very first book, Jakob der Luegner, which has been made into two different film versions (the latest starring Robin Williams). But I love this one even more.
Bronsteins Kinder tells the story of a young man, Hans, whose love affair with his girlfriend Martha has just broken up. Awkwardly, he still lives in the same house with Martha and her parents, who took him in after his father (a fellow member of the very small community of Jews in Berlin) died a year before. Unbeknownst to Martha and her parents, Hans been dealing not just with the death of his father but with the disturbing circumstances surrounding his death that he has shared with no one.
The book moves back and forth between the two time periods: the current time period (when Hans is finally able to think through exactly what happened to his father and what he should now do with his life) and the events of a year before (when things were still good between Hans and Martha but Hans’ father was becoming more and more deeply embroiled in activities that would eventually lead to tragedy.)
I won’t give the plot away, because the pleasure of the book is partly built on its suspense, but let me just say that the ethical questions that underpin this book are fascinating and Becker’s writing is superb. Hans is a character that just continues to stay with me (every time I cut green beans I think of him!–you’ll see); I hope you might give him a try, too.
When I lived in Germany, I discovered a children’s book author who was very popular–Janosch. He wrote a series of picture books about two characters, der kleine Bär and der kleine Tiger. The level of these books was just write for me at the time, and they remain a lot of fun. My favorite is probably Oh, wie schön in Panama, which I read out loud in my German 102 class this week.