Upper-intermediate stories
Original German stories written for this level, with comprehension questions.
Short stories
38 original stories written for this level, each with a comprehension check.
Das Gutachten
An impatient dentist brings a romantic landscape painting to a Munich restorer and needs her to confirm by Friday that it is genuine.
Die letzte Fähre
On the last ferry to the island of Hiddensee on a stormy November evening, a young man without a ticket tells the captain why he is making the crossing.
Die Schnecke von Frauenfeld
A giant bronze snail on the market square of a Swiss town sparks a battle of letters to the editor between a retired teacher and an anonymous reader.
Die Katze des Dombaumeisters
A Regensburg tour guide who once made up a legend to wake up a tired tour group is invited for coffee by a retired historian with some awkward questions.
Die Steillage
A burnt-out Frankfurt management consultant spends two weeks picking grapes on the Moselle and can't resist calculating whether the old winemaker's steep vineyard makes sense.
Hundertachtzig Meter Taft
In the summer of 1979, a saleswoman in an East German department store sells a polite stranger far more fabric than any camping club could need, and has to decide whether to report him.
Die letzte Deutschlehrerin
In 2041, when earpieces translate every language instantly, a German teacher in Bochum has only one student left, and her course is about to be cancelled.
Die Zeugin im dritten Stock
An 84-year-old woman in Wiesbaden who watches her street all day sees her neighbour carry something heavy out of the house at night, and nobody believes her.
Das Wasser von Altona
Hamburg, 1892: in letters to her sister, a young hospital nurse describes the cholera epidemic and a strange pattern she notices among her patients.
Der Kollege, den es nicht gab
For four years the complaints department of a haulage firm has blamed every mistake on a colleague who doesn't exist, and now the new head of HR wants to promote him.
Ein Kreisel für Oberwinkel
A local newspaper reports on a Bavarian village council meeting where nobody can agree on what should stand in the middle of a new roundabout.
Die letzte Lotsenfahrt
On his very last night guiding ships through the Kiel Canal, an old pilot sails with the young woman he doubts can replace him.
Die Stimme im Navi
The woman in Linz whose voice gives directions in millions of satnavs gets a handwritten letter from a lorry driver about to make his last trip.
Der Löschantrag
In a future Lucerne where people can have memories erased, a woman asks an archivist to give back one she deleted years ago without knowing what it was.
Die letzte Kontrolle
On the night Poland joins the Schengen area, a German border officer in Görlitz waits on the bridge for the old woman who has offered him cake every Friday for three years.
Sehr geehrte Frau Petersen
After a job rejection from an Aachen gingerbread bakery, Jonas sends a reply that the HR department has never seen before.
Ein Stein vom Himmel
After a fireball lights up the sky over the Allgäu, a retired surveyor and his twelve-year-old granddaughter join hundreds of treasure hunters looking for meteorite fragments, using his old maps instead of their metal detectors.
Sieben senkrecht
The man who writes the crossword for a Regensburg newspaper starts receiving postcards that point out his mistakes, and then the postcards stop.
Warum ich nicht mehr mähe
A Bielefeld columnist explains why she stopped mowing her front lawn and what happened when the neighbours called the authorities.
Die erste Landsgemeinde
Appenzell, April 1991: a woman remembers the day her 78-year-old grandmother voted for the first time, carrying her late husband's sword.
Krampusnacht in Gastein
A young bank clerk in the Gastein valley thinks her colleague is the most boring man in Austria, until the Krampus comes to visit her frightened little daughter.
Podium in Davos
During the World Economic Forum in Davos, a waiter from the Engadin is mistaken for a missing speaker and ends up on stage in a panel on the future of work.
Dreißig Bahnen
A lifeguard at an outdoor pool in Bamberg wonders why a very slow old man swims exactly thirty lengths every morning, counting each one out loud.
Der Fuchs, der Bürgermeister werden wollte
A fable from the Lüneburg Heath: a smooth-talking fox runs for mayor of a farmyard and promises the hens he will guard them day and night.
Der Esel hat Dienst
After wolves kill eleven of his sheep in Upper Lusatia, a stubborn old shepherd wants nothing to do with the official wolf adviser or her suggestions.
Der Mann, der Sonnabend sagte
When a bakery chain in Hesse is blackmailed by an anonymous caller, the police turn to a Marburg dialect expert who listens not to what he says, but how.
Die Organistin von St. Jakobi
A young church organist in Lübeck, bored by endless weddings, starts hiding cheeky folk-song melodies in her music, until an elderly woman in the back row begins to name every one of them.
Rheinabwärts
In her diary, a young woman from Basel records her first trip as a deckhand on a Rhine cargo ship, and the silent captain who keeps asking her to read things aloud.
Der Ghostwriter
Jonas earns his living in Leipzig writing dating-app messages for other people, until he realises that two of his clients are writing to each other.
Die alte Bestzeit
A pharmacist from Chur who has never done any sport trains for four years to beat the cycling time her late father wrote in his notebook in 1989.
Die Kasse des Vertrauens
A report from a village in the Uckermark, where a self-service shop with no staff and no cameras has a strange problem: there is always too much money in the till.
Der grantige Fiaker
Vienna's grumpiest horse-carriage driver becomes an internet star after a German influencer films one of his tours, and he hates every minute of it.
Das Konto 4471-B
A Zurich bank clerk who searches for the heirs of forgotten accounts follows the trail of a young waitress from 1966, and it leads somewhere he never expected.
Zehn Euro für Dr. Bergmann
At an insurance company in Hanover, Leonie draws the name of her stern, humourless boss for the office Secret Santa and has three weeks to find out what he might like.
Die Heizung im vierten Stock
In a series of emails, a tenant in Cologne complains to her property manager that her heating goes cold every night, and nobody can find the fault.
Ostern eine Woche zu früh
In Mainz in 1473, a young printer's apprentice sets his first wall calendar, and a tiny mistake puts Easter on the wrong Sunday in four hundred households.
Die Nacht der Kröten
A reporter spends a rainy March night in the Sauerland with volunteers who carry migrating toads across a road, among them a teenager doing community service.
Linksherum
Three days before a Viennese ball, an IT technician from Linz who has never danced has to replace his sister's injured partner in the opening, and learn the left-turning waltz from a merciless eighty-two-year-old dance teacher.
Nonfiction
2 original articles: explainers, news-style pieces, columns and workplace texts, each with a comprehension check.
Ein Dorf kauft seine Kneipe
A report from a tiny village in the Altmark, where the residents tried to raise the money to buy back their only pub before an investor turned it into holiday flats.
Reportage
Unser Auto wohnt jetzt nebenan
A father in Essen takes stock of his family's first year without a car and finally admits why they really sold it.
Opinion column