Language Courses & Examinations News

CERTIFICATES will be issued to successful candidates later on in the year.

MEMBERS WHO INTEND TO SIT FOR THESE EXAMINATIONS ARE TO APPLY AT THE CIRCLE'S OFFICE FOR THEIR INDEX NUMBER BY NOT LATER THAN TUESDAY, 19th JUNE.

WORT-Werkstatt  Hören – Malen – Reden
Wir freuen uns auf viele neugierige Kinder für unsere letzte WORTWerkstatt vor der Sommerpause am Samstag, den 23. Juni 2007 um 16 Uhr im Deutsch-Maltesischen Zirkel! Im Mittelpunkt wird wieder eine Lesung aus einem neuen Buch stehen, daneben gibt es neue Wortspiele, lustige Gedichte und wie immer die Möglichkeit zum Malen! Zur besseren Vorbereitung bitten wir wieder um Anmeldung bis 22. Juni 2007 im DMZ!  Die nächste Veranstaltung wird dann im September stattfinden. Der genaue Termin wird in einem späteren Newsletter veröffentlich werden!

CABARET CULTURE & POPULAR MUSIC - FROM THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC TO UNITED GERMANY 
Wednesday, 13th June at 19.00hours

Lecture by Frederick A. Lubich, Professor of German and Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at Old Dominion University, Virginia, USA.  

The lecture will be supported by visual excerpts and music samples, and will deal to a great extent with the type of entertainment prevailing during the first half of the twentieth century as well as post war Germany up to unification. This will be very interesting for our younger members to hear and see what amused their great-grandparents - and for our not so young members to evoke nostalgic memories. In English!

A Quiz Competition for Schoolchildren

On the occasion of the German EU Presidency, which will end on the 30^th June, the German-Maltese Circle launched a Quiz Competition amongst schoolchildren in Years 5, 6 and 7 in Primary Schools and those in Forms 1 and 2 currently studying German and attending Secondary Schools.  More than 50 schools participated.  The response from these children aged 9 to 12 was very encouraging.  In fact, 2060 entries were received from the Primary School sector, while 400 entries came from the Secondary Schools.   

The Quiz was presented in the form of ten multiple choice questions relating to topics connected with Germany.  Some of the questions may be interesting to tackle by our readers.  We invite you to go to our webpage: www.germanmaltesecircle.org/forthcomingevents.htm and click on the item “Quiz Competition for Schoolchildren”.  Test your general knowledge! 

35 children were selected by lot from amongst the correct entries received.  These will be presented with their prizes during a short ceremony which will be held for them at Messina Palace on Friday, 8^th June.  The first ten prizes consist of MP3’s and Portable stereo radios, while another 25 consolation prizes will be handed out.

NEWS from Messina Palace

Christine Bugeja, a 22 year old student attending our ZOP class has been chosen to go to the Eurocamp 2007 which this year will be held in Wernigerode in Sachsen-Anhalt. 

The Director of the Information Centre at the Goethe Institute in Rome, Frau Christina Hasenau, together with her assistant, Frau Stefanie Nollte were in Malta for a few days in order to assist the German-Maltese Circle in plans aimed at modernising and reorganising our Library.  Earlier this year, the Director General of the Goethe Institute in Rome, Frau Susanne Höhn together with Frau Doris Martorana, officer in charge of relations with Cultural Institutes, were also our guests during an inspection and auditing visit carried out on behalf of the Goethe Institute and which tackled aspects such as Legal Status, Finances, Management & Administration, Premises, Language Courses and Library facilities. 

Much has been written and said about the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, (DDR) or the former East Germany, where the educational system gave rise to some criticism. Sirka Facklam was born and educated there before it ceased to exist in 1990. Reminiscing about her childhood, Sirka’s education and studies appeared to be more than strange for a young girl. But as fate would have it, experience and knowledge gained at the relatively limited and largely controlled possibilities of studying in the DDR came in surprisingly good use when she settled in Malta.  Let us see how this came about: 

Sirka was born on the shores of the Baltic Sea, in Schwerin, today capital of the Federal State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Although she had good marks at school and was intelligent, she was not chosen as one of the two or three children per class who were usually allowed to matriculate in subjects related to the natural sciences or humanities. Under the system prevailing at the time, more often than not, the political allegiance of the parents was one of the election criteria. So she had to attend a vocational school for technical professions. At the age of 19 she qualified there as Facharbeiter für Gleisbautechnik – a technician for track construction for railways! What would a young girl do with such an education? Well, Sirka was determined to somehow reach her real goal, namely to study Germanistik - German Philology at the Karl-Marx-Universität in Leipzig, originally founded in 1409.  

Again, due to the strict numerus clausus system for Germanistik she could not study this subject and joined an engineering course instead, which she followed for three semesters. She then worked for two years at a cultural organisation in Leipzig until in 1989 she was finally accepted for a course in Germanistik commencing in 1990. By then political changes were imminent, and after the eventual unification of Germany she was free to study the subjects she desired – but so were many thousand other young Germans. Ironically this resulted in more than a hundred students cramming the Department for German Philology in Leipzig, originally laid out to house ten students only. So she settled for the next best to her dreams, i.e. taking Journalism and Russistik – Russian Philology, graduating with the degree of Magister in 1996.                                                 

In order to upgrade her financial situation during studies she worked part-time for a Law Office in Leipzig as a secretary; and in order to upgrade the required English she booked a two weeks’ language course in Malta. That was in 1993. First time in a Mediterranean country, sunshine, blue sea, a laid back life style, a sharp contrast to the hectic German way of life - well, who would be surprised: She met this nice young Maltese gentleman and fate started to take a different course. A little later she interrupted her studies in Leipzig for one semester and spent the five months of October to February 1993/94 in Malta. If there had been any doubts before, during this period Malta and the Maltese won. Immediately after her graduation in 1996 she moved to Malta, which became her home. The couple live in Naxxar and their lovely twin girls were born in 2000. 

It was for these girls that she approached the German-Maltese Circle last summer suggesting a group activity for young German-speaking children. This event started under the title Wortwerkstatt (activities in German for young children) in March 2007. Sirka is also one of the discussion leaders in the re-established Gesprächsrunde (conversation group for adults) of the German-Maltese Circle, meeting twice a month. 

Many years ago, on one of Sirka’s visits in Malta, while still studying in Leipzig, she had noticed by chance an advertisement in a Maltese Paper looking for a secretary fluent in German, Russian and English. She contacted this company, however, shelved the matter until she finally settled here. Then to her great astonishment, this office was still interested in her services when she contacted them again, and the extraordinary coincidence in Sirka’s life unfolded: This company is the sales office for Eastern Europe and Russia of an Austrian manufacturer of machinery to construct and maintain railway tracks! She accepted the position as a secretary, was soon promoted to Project Leader, and is now the Director for the Malta Office. Life plays strange games, at last justifying the combination of technical and linguistic subjects of her youth.                         

Author and painter Wilhelm Busch, Germany’s foremost poet and humorist, was born in Wiedensahl, near Hanover, on April 15th, 1832.  Most known for his satirical picture stories, Busch is regarded as one of the forefathers of the modern comic strip.  Due to a lack of space at his parent’s house, the young Wilhelm, the eldest of seven children, was forced to move to his uncle’s home in Ebergötzen near Göttingen when he was nine years old.  There, the son of the local miller, Erich Bachmann, became his closest and lifelong friend.  In their youth, the two friends spent much time together at the father’s mill, which is described in Busch’s most famous and loved book, “Max und Moritz”.  The mill in Ebergötzen can still be visited today and draws many tourists to the region.

When Busch was 15 years old, his father sent him to study mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of Hanover.  Unhappy with his father’s selection of a vocation, Busch broke off his studies there in 1851 and began studying applied arts at the Academies of Art in Düsseldorf, Antwerp, and Munich.

In 1865 he wrote and illustrated “Max und Moritz.”  As he was still a student at the time and had no money or experience, Busch sold the rights to the book to his publisher, Kasper Braun, for 1,700 gold marks.  Braun became rich from the sales of the book.  Only years later did Busch receive a settlement of 20,000 gold marks, which he donated to charity.  In addition to his numerous picture stories, Busch painted about 1,000 oil paintings, which were not released until after his death on January 9th, 1908. 

Today, Wilhelm Busch’s satirical stories are still very popular and read by children and adults alike; recordings have been made of several of them.  The city of Hannover is celebrating Wilhelm Busch Year in 2007, and a documentary on his life was recently telecast in Germany. Every year the Wilhelm Busch Award is presented to an author for humorous and satirical composition.  Some of Busch’s verses have even become proverbs, such as, Vater werden ist nicht schwer, Vater sein dagegen sehr (to become a father is not hard, to be one, however, is very.)

Two exhibitions are currently on display in Hanover at the Wilhelm Busch Museum to commemorate Wilhelm Busch’s life and work on the anniversary of his birth.

With thanks to the German Embassy Washington D.C.

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