2018 German Examinations Prize-giving ceremony

At the Fisher & Paykel Appliances auditorium at Auckland University

A large number of students, parents, friends, families and teachers attended the prize-giving celebrations of the 2018 Auckland Goethe Society German examinations on September 26.  The Fisher & Paykel Appliances auditorium at Auckland University was packed with visitors and aspiring German language learners.

Guest speaker Astrid Sandberg and overall winner Hugh Malcolm, Mount Albert Grammar School.

Guest speaker Astrid Sandberg shared her experience with the audience and described how learning the German language has enriched her life and helped her to make a lot of friends and has led to a successful career.  She encouraged the young students to give learning a second language a chance.

Auckland Goethe Society president Stephan Resch pointed out that the examinations would not have been possible without the support of the teachers of German in Auckland schools and the help of a dedicated team of people, willing to be involved.

Game Board Night

Lots of laughter

Setting the table

On Wednesday, June 13th, the Auckland Goethe Society invited to an evening of German board games. The cosy atmosphere in the Humanities Common Room of Auckland University was the perfect antidote to the cold and dark weather conditions outside. The number of entrants was not large but all the more passionate about playing board games. We had some excellent German versions of popular games.

Stocked up with chips, Gummibaerchen, crackers, cheese, soft drinks and juice, we dived into the games. The only challenge was the agony of choice. We enjoyed the evening very much, whether we played 'Pirateninse', 'Spiel des Lebens' or 'Reise um die Welt'. It was all fun and entertainment and the participants would like to have a repeat. Bring it on.

Fun for young and old ones

German Quiz Night

With 40 plus participants, this year's edition of the annual Goethe Society German Quiz Evening on May 16, was again a great success.

Quiz Girls

Thinking about the right answers

Group 'Natives' was one of the winners

MC Johnson Zhuang (picture right) led through the fun-filled evening, helped by Annika Wischnewski and Anna Luft, who double-checked all questions and evaluated  the answer sheets for the participants.

Johnson Zhuang

School and university students, as well as Goethe Society members and German teachers teamed up to answer the pub quiz format questions about Germany. Participants were tested on their general knowledge about the country and in diverse fields such as history, geography, society, popular culture, literature, music and sports.

One of the funniest part was to recreate long German words. The German language is notable for its compound nouns such as Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz, which means "law for the delegation of monitoring beef labelling". Thankfully, this word is out of use since 2013. 

For reasons of fairness, German teachers and native speakers played in a separate category. The winners enjoyed German sweets and other goodies. 

Sexuality in Interwar German Film

Around 25 people joined the presentation of Katie Sutton on April 16th, 2018. The lecturer at the Australian National University in Melbourne talked about how photography and film were used to make research into sexuality appear more scientific and therefore more respectable. She discussed two films: The Steinach-Film (The Steinach Film, 1923), a documentary detailing Viennese physiologist Eugen Steinach’s pioneering sex organ transplant experiments, and G W Pabst’s 'Geheimnisse einer Seele' (1926), a thriller narrative as a means of popularizing the still-new methods and theories of psychoanalysis. It was an inspiring and interesting insight into the film industry of these days.

Research into Language Teaching and Learning

Prof.em. Friederike Klippel and Senior Lecturer Dr Diana Feick

Around 20 guests joined the Auckland Goethe Society on Monday March, 19th, to listen to the presentation of Prof. em. Friederike Klippel from the University of Munich. She gave an in depth insight into the research of language learning throughout the last 120 years and explained the status quo. Klippel focused on questions such as 'What are the topics and areas of research? How is research conducted? Who are the researchers? Where does research happen?' She reported on trends and developments in the last years and sketched the current state of research. Adding to that, she looked at its present blind spots. Finally, she shared her personal views with the audience, on topics such as 'how to look into the role of teaching different languages, how to approach things long -term as well as the role of grammar'. A lively discussion followed her presentation.

Celebrating Christmas 2017

Auckland Goethe Society President Stephan Resch addresses the guests

Volker Strübing

Between 35 and 40  people joined us at our 'Weihnachtsfeier' on December 15, 2017 in the music auditorium at Auckland University’s Epsom Campus. Volker Strübing, Goethe-Institut writer in residence in Christchurch, was our special guest. He read some of his work and spoke of his experience as a traveller in New Zealand. His partner Renée van Bavel performed on the piano. It was a very pleasant evening with Stollen, Plätzchen and other seasonal goodies as well as juice, wine and tea. Thanks to everyone for their generous contributions. It was an enjoyable evening and a pleasant way to wrap up the year.

2017 German Examinations Prize-giving

On September 27, the Fisher & Paykel Appliances auditorium at Auckland University was again packed with students, parents, friends, families and teachers to attend the prize-giving celebrations of the 2017 Auckland Goethe Society German examinations. Over 400 people joined in, 170 of them language students. Nicola Gaston, associate professor at the University of Auckland, was guest speaker. She talked about the value of arts & languages and how she enriched her life as a natural scientist. The students showed wonderful levels of proficiency in German, as well as an understanding that a different language may be one of the best career development tools with a competitive advantage.

Dr. Nicola Gaston

Samoa under German Rule

Around 40 guests joined us at the Auckland University on Thursday, 21st of September, to listen to Matthew Fitzpatrick. The associate professor from Flinders University in Adelaide talked about the German past of Samoa and the ‘liberal version of imperial power’. Fitzpatrick was examining elements of the German colonialism in Samoa, suggesting that to reduce the time between 1871 and 1914 to the pre-history of the Holocaust is a poor one for understanding liberal forms of imperialism, but to rehabilitate it naively as Germany’s ‘good colony’ isn’t the right approach either. Citing newspapers of the time and other sources he painted a lively picture of the time when the Germans lived on the island in the South Pacific, and showed how imperialism, even if it is liberal, could be a history of dispossession and of structural inequality. The question and answer session following the speech showed that there was a vivid interest in the topic.

Nicole Perry and Matthew Fitzpatrick

Audience University of Auckland