Goethe-Schiller Denkmal, Weimar. Photo by MjFe (CC BY 3.0) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2875922

 Freundschaft

The Competition Tasks

Click here for some of our thoughts and ideas about friendship in German culture - from historic and literary friendships, to odd couples on stage and screen, the international friendship between German and the UK, and those pesky falsche Freunde which all German learners encounter...

Download the full competition details and guidelines here.

Years 5 and 6 (age 9-11):

• Draw a picture of your best friend, and annotate it with a description of them. 
• Design a poster for an event intended to help German-speaking people who have just moved to your area to make friends. 
• Make a comic strip about two or more famous friends (like the four Bremer Stadtmusikanten or the twins in Erich Kästner’s Das doppelte Lottchen – see our inspiration page for more ideas!)

Years 7 to 9 (age 11-14):

• Write and illustrate a modern version of one of Max and Moritz’s adventures.
• Write a funny story about a German word and an English word who are ‘falsche Freunde’. You can find a link to a list of ‘falsche Freunde’ on the inspiration page.
• Write an email to a pupil at a school in your town’s Austrian, Swiss or German twin town, introducing yourself and your school, and explaining why you’d like to be friends.

Years 10 and 11 (age 14-16):

• Retell the story of Gretel Rieber and June Whitcombe as either a video animation (using plenty of German), a poem, or a podcast documentary.
• Imagine a conversation between a pair or group of well-known friends from German literature or history – see our inspiration page for ideas!
• Write a blog post advising German, Austrian and Swiss readers on how to make friends in the UK.

Years 12 and 13 (age 16-18):

• Write an extract from the script of a TV programme (of any genre) featuring the group of friends from Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues.
• Create a brochure containing some rules, tips and advice for younger teenagers on using social media safely to keep in touch with their friends and make new ones.
• “Deutschland und Großbritannien: Freunde oder Feinde?”: write an essay with this title.

Open Competition for Groups or Classes (4+ participants)

• Write and perform a sketch in German about a friendship between two (historical) figures from different periods in history or from different countries. Send us a video, audio or written transcript of your performance.
• Write and perform a song about friendship. Send us a video or audio file of your performance!
• Take us on a ‘virtual tour’ of your town’s German twin city – you could create a website or a print brochure.

The Oxford German Network is grateful to the Association for Language Learning and the Independent Schools' Modern Languages Association for their support of the Oxford German Olympiad and to Oxford University Press, the German Embassy, Blackwell UK Ltd., the German Tourist Office (London), Goethe Institut (London), and Penguin Books for the donation of prizes for the Oxford German Olympiad.