Director Uwe Belz focuses his attention on viewing Karl Marx from an alternative perspective, showing the emotional and romantic sides of the historical figure. Passages from LOVE LETTERS that Marx and his fiancée, Jenny von Westphalen, exchanged as teenagers blend with paintings and beautifully atmospheric photographs of places connected to Marx. The letters and poems are read by well-known East German actors, such as Jenny Gröllmann and Dieter...

Diana Groó’s documentary tells the story of Regina Jonas (1902-1944) a strong woman, who made history by becoming the first properly ordained woman rabbi in the world.The daughter of an Orthodox Jewish peddler, Jonas grew up in Berlin’s slum, studied at the liberal Hochschulefür die Wissenschaft des Judentums (College for the Scientific Study of Judaism) beginning in 1924,and was ordained in 1935. At age 37, she met the love of her life, Rabbi...

This film documents a vital moment in the re-building of a city center, where the Berlin wall once stood. Within a few years Pariser Platz was rebuilt, accompanied by an extensive public debate about the quality of the new architecture and the merits of the city planning for the area. An imposing assembly of internationally acclaimed architects found new solutions for the ten buildings that once defined the site, among them the American embassy. Featured...

In HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME, German filmmaker Thomas Heise shares the stories of three generations of his family, tracing the contours of the major historical uphevals that afflicted Germany in the 20th century. Uncovering journal entries, photographs and contemporary footage, Heise creates a poetic meditation on individual and collective history.

From an official perspective, marginal youth culture did not exist in East Germany. The topic of subcultures was taboo in the GDR, and groups such as goths, skinheads, anti-skins, punks and neo-Nazis were dismissed as social deviations promoted by western countries. Director Roland Steiner had access to such young East Germans in the late 1980s. Over the course of four years, he brought them before the camera in an attempt to understand what drew...

German is one of the most influential languages in the world, and an influential language on the Internet. Our German series has updated books, cards, and videos! The Lift-the-Flap Books now include more images for each key word, along with small sentences in English to help non-German-speaking parents. For the first time, the Teaching Cards and Sliding Word Cards now include articles (der, die, and das) to help non-native speakers learn. The 5 videos...

"In My First Look at German, beginning readers follow the narrative of a German-speaking character through a typical day. Labels on real-life photos introduce common German words. Each label lists the English word, as well as the German word and its pronunciation. An introduction gives more insight into the language, and a guide at the beginning of the book teaches readers and caregivers how to navigate the book's features. Translations of colors,...

Delve into the checkered past of Professor Pfrehm as you learn about the simple past. This tense is different in form from the present perfect you learned earlier, but its meaning is the same, though it is mostly used in formal writing. Cover the simple past forms of the verbs sein, haben, and geben, and the modal verbs müssen, können, mögen, dürfen, wollen, and sollen.

Practice your first joke in German. Then meet the fourth and final German case (the genitive), completing your study of the case system. See how von + a dative construction performs the same function as the genitive. Then turn to prepositions that take the genitive, such as wegen and laut. Finally, plunge into the passive voice, learning how to turn the object of a sentence into the subject.