Why would a Bulgarian choose to study German in her or his own country? Studying a foreign language is a challenge, but also provides opportunities and opens doors to another culture, one distant but yet so close, as it is also European. There are, of course, other connections between Bulgaria and Germany, enough to make a child interested in the culture of the historic and the modern Germany.
10 years ago…
I graduated from the oldest German language high school in Sofia, because, for our family, it was as simple as that: I had studied English in primary school, and my father thought that I already knew it, so I needed to enrich my knowledge with another tongue. And, as he had learned and worked with both English and Germans, his advice wasn’t to go to the French high school (the third “most elite” in those times in Bulgaria), but to apply to the German one.
There, I found that quite a few pupils knew the language already, and many had parents working in or with German companies, or had lived or had relatives in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, making it the child’s dream to live there, too.
German was also studied in Bulgaria to complement knowledge of English. According to another former student, learning German was not as easy as learning English, as it was not a language that could readily be picked up from music, cinema or general popular culture.
Bulgaria has always had good relations with Germany, Yulia Radoslavova, the director and co-owner of the German school and kindergarten Uwekind, says. Many tourists from there have been visiting Bulgaria since communist times. And, given that the former East Germany was on the same side of the iron curtain, some Bulgarians, especially those living along the Black Sea coast, consider it important to know the language.
Students at Sofia University also often choose German as a second language, although, according to one of the professors there, German culture currently does not have a large influence in Bulgaria. Radoslavova agrees that there is only a slight influence, as, according to her, Bulgaria is more orientated towards the UK and the USA.
Maria Kanazirska, the manager of the private German School Erich Kestner, which was founded in 1996, finds the modern German nation to be relatively inactive in organising cultural exchanges with Bulgaria. “Five or six years ago, there were more programmes for training teachers in schools and kindergartens in Germany,” she says. She believes that Germany should not leave everything related to cultural exchange in the hands of the European Union.
From the beginning
Currently, Bulgaria has a number of German schools, from kindergartens, to elementary and secondary schools, to Gymnasiums, as they call high school in немски (German).
According to Kanazirska, many of her pupils are driven by the fact that they have German, Austrian or Swiss relatives. About 10 per cent of the children at Uwekind also have at least one parent of such origin. Uwekind parents also point out that they want their descendants to first study German, a more difficult language, as they believe that their child will later learn English anyways.
Nowadays, there are also many students who see career prospects in German-speaking countries or the benefits of attending university in Austria, Germany or Switzerland, Kanazirska says.
She says that language education from first to seventh grade is very intense at her school. From kindergarten on, students pass the entire morning in German, singing songs and learning poems. In first grade, the pupils have music lessons in German, in the fifth grade they start learning computer technology in German, and each year following, a new subject is added, such as geography, history or ecology, all in German.
Practising and enriching
The most accessible institution in Sofia for practising the language and enriching one’s cultural knowledge remains the Goethe-Institut, Kanazirska says, as the rest of the native German language teachers in Bulgaria are more strictly tied to their schools. Uwekind pupils also attend activities at the Goethe-Institut. The German organisation often invites German poets or writers to present contemporary literature to the little ones. Students from Erich Kestner are quite interested in the contemporary art shown there, as their study programme otherwise includes mostly classical literature. Goethe-Institut also organises exhibitions and films screenings. Pupils are also members of its library, which is, in fact, open to anyone.
Students of German also partake in language competitions. Yohanna Spasova, a pupil at the Erich Kestner school in Sofia, won the annual competition in Bulgaria, then went on to win an international German language contest in Dresden, Kanazirska says proudly.
Students from Erich Kestner also do exchange visits with families of children at a Thessaloniki, Greece, German language school. Another option for exchange is the Schnupperstudium programme organised by German universities. They hold competitions for local students, and the winner is awarded 10 days in a German university to attend lectures, thus giving a better practical idea of what to study in the near future.
Uwekind students also travel a lot, mostly with their parents, but also on organised school trips. About 10 per cent of them continue their studies in a German-language country, Radoslavova says.
About 50 or 60 per cent of students at Erich Kestner continue their education abroad, mostly in Germany, but also in Austria, Italy or the UK. Those who remain in Bulgaria very rarely carry on studying German at university, tending instead to prefer economics or English philology, Kanazirska says.
Ten years ago, when I graduated, the share of Bulgarian students enrolling in German or Austrian universities was about the same, if not higher, reaching about 70 to 80 per cent. However, most of them have since graduated and returned to Bulgaria.
