Ten Years of Traveling through France for the German Language and Culture

The German Federal Foreign Office has designated 2010 the “Year of the German Language” and DeutschMobil will be ten years old. Since the end of 2000, German lecturers have visited French students in elementary schools, collèges (middle schools), and high schools, and have worked toward improving German-French relations in an unconventional way. On June 10, 2010, the Robert Bosch Stiftung celebrated this anniversary with the organizations behind the DeutschMobil project and its partners: the Federation of German-French Houses in France, Mercedes-Benz, and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The event was launched by Ambassador Reinhard Schäfers and Cornelia Pieper, Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office.

With 150 German and French students in attendance, Minister Pieper opened the exhibition on Germany’s federal states, which was originally set up in the backs of the DeutschMobil vans. The exhibition showed items of special interest to children in each German state: these included games by Ravensburger, stuffed animals from Steiff, and Ahoj candy (similar to carbonated ‘pop rocks’) in Baden-Württemberg; Till Eulenspiegel and the Kieler Woche festival in Schleswig-Holstein; and Tokio Hotel and the Walpurgis Night witch in Sachsen-Anhalt.

Listen to the report by ARD correspondent Evelyn Seibert (in German):