Maps, political divisions (past and present), roadmaps, more

-  1789 map of German territories

-  German national map, Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), Osnabrueck, Melle, and Buer in the Bus'd'ker family section, and more

-  Europe and Switzerland, increasing in detail down to the town of Herzogenbuchsee, Canton Bern.

-  Interactive maps of the World, Europe, and USA
 

Language is important to the study of Germania.  Many excellent translations and original works are available in English, but none can carry the precise intent and spirit of the German originals.  A different level of understanding can be reached in the original language.


   -- Whether you're a beginner, brushing up on a college course, or digging into the finer points of the language, you will find a wealth of useful information at www.german.about.com.  Language lessons, translation, current reading and listening references and more are presented in an easily-navigated format.

 

Video - watch the short (20 minutes or so) daily newsprogram ARD Tagesschau at www.tagesschau.de.  Go to the blue Multimedia box on the left side of the Tagesschau page and choose either Letzte Sendung or Alle Sendungen.
 

Music -  German pop music in the late 50's and early 60's is similar to that in the U.S.  Some are tunes that were popular under English titles.  For those who want to improve their ability to understand spoken German, listening to music of that era provides valuable practice.  While it can be difficult, expensive, or both to find such music in the U.S., it can be painless and cheaper than you might think to get it directly from Germany.

A good place to start, in my opinion, is Das Schlager Alphabet, a 22 CD collection.  Each of the CD's, with two exceptions, contains titles that start with the same letter.  My favorite is the W collection.  The exceptions are the multi-letter CD's, O-P-Q and X-Y-Z.  To see a list of all titles in the collection click here.  For the lyrics of a few of my favorites click here.

I purchased my set from Ronny Buse in Berlin, who trades on www.eBay.de as vendor "lion-invest."  Ronny is very customer-oriented as well as fully capable in English.  If you want to buy ten or more titles he says that he will offer you a special rate, which he did in my case.  I got the entire collection of Das Schlager Alphabet for about half the price compared to buying individual CD's, and the shipping was a lot less.  It took less than three weeks for me to receive the well-packed collection.  You can contact Ronny at ronnybusse@buco-berlin.de
 

Magazines




  German Life (English language), six issues per year covering German life, history, places, food and events in  the US as well as Germany, Austria and Switzerland.  Well-worth the price of $22.95 per year ($24.10 in MD, $32 in Canada).

Newspapers

   -- Süddeutsche Zeitung (German language) - a less formal, more relaxed newspaper that reminds me of the old New York Herald-Tribune.  Read it at www.sueddeutsche.de

   -- Frankfurter Allgemeine  (German language) - the Frankfurt am Main based German equivalent of the New York Times, located at www.faz.net

   -- Handelsblatt  (German language) - Germany's Wall Street Journal is at  http://www.handelsblatt.de
 

Dictionaries - be warned: when a dictionary is called "German-English", it usually means "UK English", which is not precisely the same as "US English".  Most of the differences are merely humorous or just incomprehensible alternative definitions.

Grammar Reference     -- Canoo.net  -  One of the greatest challenges in learning the German language lies in being able to recognize different forms of a word when going from present tense to past tense, or active voice to passive, or using a subjunctive expression.  The difficult ones can be avoided in speaking, but not in listening or reading.  "ei" can change to "ie", "ie" changes to "ei", and even more puzzling changes can occur. 

The greatest aid that I have found is the site a www.canoo.net , which allows you to enter any form of a word, and returns not only the base but all forms of that word.  If you have ever run across the book, "501 Verbs in German", you have an idea of what Canoo provides ... but Canoo goes way beyond what was in the book.  I use Canoo as the entry point for a word, and use its link to LEO (above) to find the definitions.
 

Recent history, particularly the 20th century, including the
-  short-lived experiment in democracy known as the Weimar Republic
-  rise of Hitler and the National Socialist (Nazi) Party,
-  Third Reich and the Holocaust.
 

Ancient history of
-  the Germanic tribes and their wanderings
-  meetings and conflict between Germans and Romans
 

Arts, including

-  Literature

-  Music, folk and classical