Advanced stories
Original German stories written for this level, with comprehension questions.
Short stories
40 original stories written for this level, each with a comprehension check.
Grüß Gott, Herr Krawczyk
A Berlin journalist who moves to a village in the Swabian Alb discovers that greeting people there is an exact science.
Die Stadt, die es nicht gibt
A woman at the Bielefeld tourist office invites a retired physics teacher who is convinced that her city doesn't exist to come and see for himself.
Die Brunnenfrage
A village in Appenzell is bitterly divided over whether to restore its cracked old fountain or replace it with a modern one, and the town clerk has to count the votes.
Beileid, automatisch
A copywriter in Düsseldorf teaches an AI to write convincing condolence cards, until her own father dies and the cards start arriving.
Zwei Tassen auf einmal
In Berlin during the hyperinflation of 1923, a waitress notices a piano teacher who always orders two cups of coffee at the same time.
Nachtprogramm
A late-night radio host in Saarbrücken has a favourite caller who only ever talks about birds, until one night he talks about the stars instead.
Das Ungeheuer vom Weissensee
The mayor of a quiet village on a lake in Carinthia invents a lake monster to bring the tourists back, and the plan works better than he expected.
Die Wand von Hassel
A local reporter in Gelsenkirchen describes, in epic style, the last match of an amateur football season, in which a 58-year-old kiosk owner has to go in goal.
Rezepte eines Toten
A young pharmacist who has just taken over an old pharmacy in Halle is handed a prescription signed by a doctor who died nineteen years ago.
Spiegelgasse, 1916
In her diary, a young waitress in Zurich's old town describes the noisy poets who have rented the back room of her inn, and the quiet Russian neighbour who keeps complaining about them.
Die Souffleuse
On the last night of her career, a prompter in a Graz theatre who has stayed invisible for forty-one years is suddenly the centre of attention.
Lob der Warteschlange
A Cologne columnist writes an ironic tribute to the hours he spent in the waiting room of the citizens' office, just as the city abolishes it.
Das Jahr ohne Sommer
A village schoolmaster in Württemberg keeps a chronicle of 1816, the year the summer never came, and of the hunger that followed.
Was der Hund sagt
A Hamburg family buys a collar that translates their dog's barking into speech, and the dog turns out to have a lot to say about them.
Chiffre 4417
A widowed farmer in the Emmental is furious when his daughter-in-law puts a lonely-hearts ad in the local paper, until fourteen replies arrive.
Die Kritikerin
Munich's most feared restaurant critic secretly loses her sense of taste, and a young cook in Giesing is the first to notice.
Die Kartenlegerin vom Naschmarkt
A former statistician who reads tarot cards at a Vienna market gets a nervous young client who wants to know whether he should propose.
Das Alibi von Bayreuth
A Nuremberg detective who can't stand opera has to check a burglary suspect's alibi: he says he spent the evening at a six-hour Wagner performance in Bayreuth.
Das Wandbild
One morning a huge mural appears on the old school of a Palatinate wine village that the mayor wants to sell, and nobody knows who painted it.
Der Fuchs und die Kamera
A modern fable from the Harz mountains: a young fox discovers a wildlife camera and decides that being seen is more important than anything else.
Nachruf auf Vorrat
A Viennese journalist who writes obituaries in advance gets a call from a famous old actress who wants to read her own.
Die letzte Telefonkabine
A local columnist in a Swiss village mocks the removal of its last phone box, until the technician mentions who still uses it.
Taxi ohne Ziel
At two in the morning in Hamburg, an old lady gets into Emre's taxi and refuses to say where she wants to go.
Die Feelgood-Managerin
A grumpy controller at a Frankfurt leasing company calculates what the new "feel-good manager" costs and wants nothing to do with her.
Das Fräulein vom Amt
In 1928, a young Berlin switchboard operator is asked every night by the same caller to connect him with impossible places.
Dr Spitzbueb
Every year during the Basel carnival, Lea's strict banker father disappears to the mountains, and an anonymous masked singer mocks the city's bankers.
Die Elster und die Wahrheit
A fable from the floodplain forest on the Elbe: a magpie discovers that nothing glitters quite like a piece of news.
Der Marillenbaum
In a Viennese allotment colony, a retired senior civil servant writes increasingly formal letters to his new neighbour about her apricot tree.
Der leere Raum
A retired car worker takes a summer job as a guard at the documenta art exhibition in Kassel and is put in charge of a completely empty room.
Die Pilzstelle
A retired judge in the Bavarian Forest finds that someone has been raiding his secret mushroom spot, and he investigates the case as if it were in court.
Die letzte Runde
At her uncle's funeral in a Carinthian valley, a Vienna consultant has to read out the speech he wrote for the occasion, and it is not the speech anyone expected.
Die Vierte am Tisch
For forty years, four men in Thun have played cards every Thursday, and when the best of them dies, the three others cannot find anyone to take his chair.
Antrag auf Muße
In 2041 Germany passes a law that gives every citizen four hours of official idleness a week, and a logistics planner from Bonn tries to apply for his.
Niedrigwasser
On one of his last tours across the mudflats from Cuxhaven to the island of Neuwerk, an old guide is lectured by an eleven-year-old with a tide app, until a sea fog rolls in.
Die Laufmaschine
Mannheim, June 1817: a sceptical landlady writes to her sister about the strange wooden machine her lodger, Baron von Drais, has been building in the courtyard.
Der Aushilfspfarrer
While the village priest is away for eight weeks, a stand-in fills a Bavarian church every Sunday, and the sacristan starts to suspect he is not what he seems.
Der Waschbär und der Wolf
A fable from the edge of the Kellerwald in Hesse: an unwanted raccoon discovers what humans fear most and uses a hunter's wildlife camera to give it to them.
Doppelt besetzt
A dull customs officer in Rostock discovers that the star of a new TV crime series has exactly his face, and the actor has an idea.
Die Krawatte
A serious actuary from Hanover, newly transferred to Cologne, refuses to believe the warnings about Weiberfastnacht and wears his late father's silk tie to work that day.
Friedland, Oktober 1955
Eleven years after her husband went missing in the war, a woman in Göttingen finds his name on the list of the last prisoners returning from the Soviet Union, and the man she now lives with drives her to meet him.