Blended Learning German Courses May 2020

For those of you looking for the most face-to-face time with other course participants and our instructors, Blended Learning is the option for you. These courses consist of 50% live group sessions, and 50% flexible online learning, closely supported by your instructors. With our virtual classroom platform, the online live sessions are just as interactive as meeting at the institute. Enter promo-code May2020 at checkout and save 20% on all Blended Learning courses beginning in May (case-sensitive; code valid thru 05/17/2020; offers may not be combined).

The Goethe Institut’s Green Kinderacademy

Sustainable, digital, free of charge: The Goethe Institut’s Green Kinderacademy is a brand new, innovative online learning platform which allows students ages 7 to 18 to join exciting and insightful webinars – free of charge, from home and with plenty of German exercises. It can be used by parents and teachers alike. Each Thursday at 1 PM EST we will host webinars which revolve around the fascinating topic of sustainability. Sessions will also be recorded and are available afterwards. 

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Call for K-12 SPARK Programs

SPARK for German, a playful approach to teaching after-school German, invites applications from K-12 German programs to connect with a SPARK Lab or offer programming at your school or feeder schools.

Check out the digital WanderbUS

The Wanderbus was one of the absolute highlights of the year of German-American friendship in 2019. Sadly, due to the COVID-19 pandemic we will have to cancel the extension of the Wanderbus tour that we had planned for 2020. However, our team did create a package of digital Wanderbus content which we have made available to download for free. Virtual reality tours of German cities, language learning games, and much more. Enjoy & stay wunderbar together!

Film | Until June 30, 2020

Goethe on Demand: 20 German Films You Can Stream For Free Now!

In cooperation with Filmgalerie 451, the Goethe-Institut presents an online streaming program called Goethe on Demand. The program consists of an exquisite selection of films available free of charge on Vimeo until June 30, 2020. From historical dramas, comedies, and romance, to documentaries, arthouse, and shorts, check out our offerings of English-subtitled films you can start watching right now. 

Web Dossier

Shaping the Past

How does the past take shape? What happens in the process of coming to terms with the past? What social repercussions are associated with the rooting of history in monuments and memorials? How can those narratives be shifted or upended through alternative, innovative approaches to memorialization? These questions and many others are at the center of our project Shaping the Past, a partnership between Monument Lab, the Goethe-Institut, and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb).

Goethe Book Club | Tuesday, May 5, 2020, 6:30pm EST

Goethe Book Club Goes Digital: Saša Stanišić's Before the Feast (2014/2016)

The Goethe Book Club is going digital! Read further to learn how we will be taking May's discussion of Saša Stanišić's Before the Feast / Vor dem Fest online.

In order to participate in the online discussion (carried out over Zoom), registrants must obtain access to the novel Before the Feast / Vor dem Fest on their own. Hard copies of the novel can be ordered through multiple vendors online; the eBook is also available for download to Kindle, iPad, and other digital reading platforms. 

It’s the evening before the feast in the village of Fürstenfelde (population: an odd number). The village is asleep. Except for the ferryman—he’s dead. Someone has opened the doors to the Village Archive, but what drives the sleepless out of their houses is not that which was stolen, but that which has escaped. Old stories, myths, and fairy tales are wandering about the streets with the people. They come together in a novel about a long night, a mosaic of village life, in which the long-established and newcomers, the dead and the living, craftsmen, pensioners, and noble robbers in football jerseys bump into one another. They all want to bring something to a close, on this night before the feast.

Online Discussion | Saturday, May 9, 3:00pm EST

Translating Unconventional Narratives: A Conversation with 2020 Wolff Prize-Winner Philip Boehm

On May 9, our colleagues at the Goethe-Institut New York are pleased to welcome award-winning translator Philip Boehm in a special online conversation with Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize jury chairwoman Dr. Shelley Frisch, moderated by Erin Cox. The discussion will be followed by a reading from Boehm's award-winning translation.

Christine Wunnicke’s novel The Fox and Dr. Shimamura (New Directions, 2019) is a unique and fantastical work, which puts the virtuosity and sensitivity of the translator in the spotlight. It presents a mythical and fractured narrative of a retired doctor in nineteenth-century Japan who reflects on the memories of his earlier days in the Shimane prefecture, where he cured women of fox possession. A book about the power of memory and narrative, Mr. Boehm will shed light on the expressive possibilities of translation at the intersection of different cultures and of capturing the dramatic spark of unconventional narratives.