""To be honest, it wasn't the most exciting book," Berlin high school student Orcun Ilter said of Kleist's "The Broken Jug," speaking to local public broadcaster RBB. In his free time, Ilter has been enjoying a book by Tahsim Durgun, who became a TikTok star with videos about his life in Germany as the child of Yazidi Kurds who immigrated here from Turkey a voice Ilter says he misses in school literature."
"Only one-fifth of the books on the nationwide required reading lists for the German high school diploma, the Abitur, were written by women. Authors with roots outside Germany and people of color are scarce. That is despite the fact that over 25% of the German population of more than 80 million have an immigrant background. That percentage is much higher among young people, especially in big cities."
German high school curricula continue to prioritise classic works by authors such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich von Kleist, while contemporary and diverse voices remain underrepresented. Only one-fifth of the books on nationwide Abitur reading lists were written by women, and authors with immigrant roots or people of color are scarce despite large immigrant-background youth populations in cities like Berlin. Education policy is determined at the state level, and most schools adhere to the Institute for Quality Development in Education (IQB) exam framework. Time and budget constraints make sourcing alternative texts difficult and costly, perpetuating a canon dominated by white male authors.
Read at www.dw.com
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