Exercise B, Grade 8:

Reading the Text

to Guess at the Meanings of Words


     Remember that, in his short conversation with Frau Kramer, Beckmann learned that his parents have committed suicide.  In a typical pre-reading phase focusing on this particular segment, the teacher introduces the unfamiliar concepts "Stalingrad" and "entnazifiziert," using maps to show where Stalingrad was.  She indicated that this was the place where the Germans lost the most decisive battle of the war and over 800,000 thousand soldiers (250,000 of whom were ethnic Germans and Hungarians; 1,100,000 Soviet soldiers fell, and an almost equal number of civilians).

     Similarly, students could see a map or a blackboard sketch illustrating that Germany was occupied by French, British, Russian, and (in Hamburg!) American soldiers after the war.  The photos accompanying the text of Draußen vor der Tür document civil destruction.  The teacher could then ask students to speculate about how these occupiers felt about former Nazis -- what it might have been like to be a former Nazi after WW II.  Those speculations could culminate with the teacher making brief comments about the fact that American occupation forces made efforts to identify former Nazis and "denazify" them.

     Once the pre-reading above is completed, then students can move into the initial reading of Scene 5.  Students are told to find the five or six most important words in the first twenty lines of Beckmann's conversation with Frau Kramer.  Typical answers might be:

einen anderen Namen
dreißig Jahre lang (Beckmann)
das Messingsschild / das Schild
(wo sind) meine Eltern
unsere Wohnung

     After these words are written correctly on the board (or corrected), students restate the who, what, where, and when of the play, to orient themselves.

 INTRODUCTION to Initial Reading Exercise, Grade 8
 EXERCISE A
 HINTS