Leitfragen zum Lesetext
German for Reading Knowledge, Seventh Edition
Kapitel 4
Kurze Geschichte der deutschen Hochschulen (p. 46)
Getting Ready
1. Do you attend a college, a university, a professional school or some other institution of
higher learning? What sort of designators are you aware of for such institutions in
German-speaking countries?
2. To what extent is the signifier Bundesrepublik more specific than Deutschland?
3. What sort of information do you expect to find in a text entitled "Kurze Geschichte
der deutschen Hochschulen"?
Getting Set
1. Look at Paragraph 1 and make a list of the dates and cities/universities associated with
them.
DATE
CITY / UNIVERSITY
2. Make a list of all the different categories of institutions of higher learning mentioned in
the text!
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
g)
Read!
1. From the text it would seem that at least THREE universities might claim to be the
"oldest German University." How do you explain this? How is the University of
Heidelberg different from the other two?
German for Reading Knowledge, Seventh Edition / ©2014
Richard Alan Korb
2. What is special about the University of Leipzig and the University of Rostock?
3. Note the number and variety of compound nouns (Komposita) in the reading text!
You can find an overview of the basic information on the common German phenomenon
of Komposita at http://german.about.com/od/nounsandcases/a/German-CompoundWords.htm.
"Angelikas German Tuition and Translation" blogsite, located at
http://angelikasgerman.co.uk/blog/lost-german-compound-nouns-found-after-longsearch, provides an alphabetical list of "lost German compound nouns." Learners
interested in German word formation, in particular Komposita, should visit Dartmouth's:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~german/Grammatik/Wortbildung/Komposita.html
4. Understanding the connections: Hochschulen compound nouns.
Match the letter of the English phrase / word on the right that matches the German
compound noun on the left in the following table.
NOTE: Hochschule is NOT "high school"! Hochschule = college / university
German Compound Noun in Text
Matches which English Equivalent:
1. die Bundesrepublik (f., no pl.)
a. 600th anniversary
2. Bundesland (n.), ¨-er
b. working families
3. Wintersemster (n.), c. federal republic
4. Arbeiterfamilie (f.), -n
d. academy of music
5. Sechshundertjahrfeier (f.), -n
e. winter semester
6. Studienanfänger (m.), f. college, institution of higher education
7. Hochschule (f.), -n
g. educational policy
8. Fachhochschule (f.), -n
h. beginning student
9. Musikhochschule (f.), -n
i. federal state
10. die Bildungspolitik (f., no pl.)
j. advanced technical college
Notes and Further Reading
1. History of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg on the web at "Geschichte der
Universität" (http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/univ/historie.html)
2. Web links to ALL German institutions of higher education, subdivided into the
following categories: "Universitäten", "Fachhochschulen und Hochschulen",
"Berufsakademien", "pädagogische Hochschulen", "Hochschulen für Kunst, Gestaltung
und Medien", "Hochschulen für Musik und darstellende Künste", "Hochschulen für
Verwaltung, Finanzen, Recht", "Private Hochschulen", and "kirchliche Hochschulen" can
be found at: http://holderied.de/DeutscheHochschulen.html
4. Wikipedia.de defines Hochschule as "ein Oberbegriff für verschiedene
wissenschaftliche, wissenschaftlich-anwendungsorientierte, künstlerischwissenschaftliche oder künstlerische Einrichtungen des tertiären Bildungsbereichs zur
beruflichen Ausbildung, Pflege der Wissenschaften und Künste durch Forschung und
Lehre". Read more at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hochschule
German for Reading Knowledge, Seventh Edition / ©2014
Richard Alan Korb