The Goethe-Institut
At home and abroad

How the Goethe-Institut’s work resonates at home

The teacher sits in front of the camera, somewhat stiffly, and ties a large serviette around his neck. He begins the educational film about customs in German restaurants with the words, “Ich habe Hunger,” (I am hungry). The menu includes goulash, veal escalope and steamed fish. Eating habits in Germany have changed since the 1960s when the Goethe-Institut began using films to teach the first guest workers language skills for life in Germany. This is in part thanks to those self-same immigrants who brought a new diversity of foods with them: Pizza, spaghetti and kebabs have long since conquered the dining tables of Germany.

Support for people making Germany their new home has also changed over the decades. Guest workers are now immigrants, and since 2015 there has also been a large influx of refugees from crisis regions such as Syria and Afghanistan. Fostering the integration of people who come to Germany has become an essential social mission – for the Goethe-Institut as well.

Today, the Goethe-Institut’s commitment extends far beyond the language courses it offers. The “Mein Weg nach Deutschland” (My Path to Germany) web portal, which was developed back in 2012 and gets around 700,000 hits a year, helps immigrants avoid many pitfalls in their new home country. Available in 30 languages, the portal teaches key life skills for living in Germany, such as how to use various media or how to navigate things like going to the authorities when they first arrive in Germany. Developed in 2016 by the Goethe-Institut in cooperation with the Federal Employment Agency, Bayerischer Rundfunk and the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the “Ankommen” (Arrive) app also guides newcomers through the first steps. Food-related topics are still addressed, but instead of the rules of etiquette for eating goulash, current topics include which foods are halal and which contain gelatine from pigs.
 

Exchange is not a one-way street

Photo: Goethe-Institut Nairobi/Lameck Orina Opening of the “Invisible Inventories” exhibition at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi. Growing global mobility – whether driven by flight, immigration, or the migration of skilled workers – also means that exchange is no longer a one-way street. Germany is growing increasingly international, and the influx of people has also brought new cultures of memory, value systems and debates in its wake.

In other words, immigrants are not the only ones who need to adapt. Germany’s citizens also need to listen to the voices from other countries and cultures and face the world, so to speak. The Goethe-Institut serves as a mediator in this process. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel called the effort to explore Germany’s image at home and abroad an “invaluable service”, making this plea for more unity in response to the “Außensicht” study the Goethe-Institut conducted together with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in 2021. The study assessed how Germany was viewed around the world.

The results were mixed: Respondents were very positive about Germany’s economic power, its healthcare system and role in international relations. On the other hand, extremist tendencies, environmental scandals and the lack of digitisation attracted negative attention abroad.

The German attitude toward its own colonial past proved to be another negative perception. This is also a good example of the backlash from international voices to the discourse at home. There is an ongoing debate in Germany about the restitution of colonial cultural assets in museums up and down the country. The “International Inventories Programme” by The Nest (Kenya) and SHIFT (Germany/France) artist collectives raises the question of returning looted art and looks at the positions of both Europeans and the countries concerned. Along with the Goethe-Institut, the National Museum of Kenya, the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Cologne, the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt am Main and, as exhibition sponsor, the German Federal Cultural Foundation are involved in the project.

As a port city, Hamburg was a centre of German colonialism, and the traces of this period are inscribed in the cityscape. The Goethe-Institut’s International Centre for Cultural Education in Hamburg has set itself the task of rendering this concealed history visible again and thus contributing to the decolonialisation of public spaces with the “ReMapping Memories Lisboa – Hamburg” project.

The online project gathers information on (post-)colonial places of remembrance in Hamburg and Lisbon on a website and serves as a good example of the work carried out by the newly established Goethe-Institut international centres for cultural education in Bonn, Dresden, Mannheim, Schwäbisch Hall and Hamburg. “Through our worldwide Goethe-Institut network, we fully support initiatives and projects that strengthen a plural and diverse society in Germany and add international perspectives,” Schayan Riaz, director of the centre in Hamburg, says of collaboration with partners in Lisbon and Hamburg. “We have plans to use ‘ReMapping’ in other contexts too. We will be taking it into schools and using the project’s content to explore the topic of (post)colonialism.”