Russian teachers in Germany are concerned about the war in Ukraine. Quite a few are wondering if their classes are getting smaller in light of the war in Ukraine. While some fear the number of Russian learners will fall, demand is increasing in some places.
It’s word monsters like this one that sometimes make students despair: “Dostoprimeschatelnosti”. That’s Russian and means “sights” in German. Tens of thousands of schoolchildren in Germany are learning the Russian language. Still. Quite a few teachers are wondering whether the Russian classes aren’t getting even smaller in view of the war in Ukraine.
“All my participants condemn the terrible war of aggression in Ukraine. But they continue to attend the Russian courses because they are interested in the language, in the culture, especially in literature,” says Elke Saniter, an adult education center teacher in Berlin. “Of course, interest in the Russian language will decrease, but it will certainly not go away,” says her colleague Ekaterina Kharitonova. “Yes, we will have less work. I can’t complain about that. I understand why that is.”
Interest is likely to wane, and not just in the federal capital. The chairman of the German Association of Russian Teachers in Marburg, Wilhelm Lückel, also assumes that the war could affect the number of Russian learners in schools in the future. “Russian will certainly continue to be part of the canon of subjects. Of course, the politics of the Russian Federation will have a negative impact on the election,” he says. Russia has been waging an illegal war of aggression against Ukraine since February. Peace is still not in sight.
In any case, public relations work for the language is currently not in demand. “A certain caution towards the subject can be observed in ministries of education,” said Lückel. His association had been asked unofficially not to hold any more Russian Olympics for the time being. In any case, the number of students learning Russian as a foreign language at general schools has declined in recent decades. According to the Federal Statistical Office, there were around 94,000 students in the 2020/2021 school year – a decrease of 83 percent compared to 1992/1993, when nationwide data were first available. At that time, around 565,100 students were learning Russian as a foreign language.
In the GDR, Russian was taught as a compulsory first foreign language. Even today, the language is mainly learned in East Germany, including Berlin. 70 percent of the pupils with Russian as a foreign language went to school there in 2020/2021. Berlin occupies a special position due to the relatively high proportion of Russian-speaking people in the population, says Lückel. According to the migrant organization “Dialog”, around 250,000 Russian speakers lived in Berlin before the war. Now there are numerous Ukrainian refugees who also speak Russian.
In Waldorf schools, where Russian is sometimes taught from the first grade, the language suddenly has a much stronger presence, reports Julian Scholl from the state working group of Waldorf schools in Berlin-Brandenburg. The schools have taken in a relatively large number of refugee children from Ukraine. “That’s why there is now much more living Russian in the school environment and in the schoolyards,” says Scholl. However, the situation is difficult, also because close exchanges with partner schools in Russia are no longer possible. “Russian teachers are desperate,” says Scholl.
Adults can take Russian courses nationwide, including at adult education centers. Among the participants are people who are involved in refugee aid, who already have previous knowledge of Russian and want to brush it up, or learners with personal contacts to Russian-speaking people, reports Stephanie Vonscheidt, head of the service center of the Berlin adult education centres.
“At the moment there is no desire to go to Russia. However, it is important for them to keep in touch with the people who are suffering from the political situation there,” says language teacher Elke Saniter about her students. According to Vonscheidt, some adult education centers in the capital even have more people willing to learn than in the previous year. In the Pankow district, there has been an increase of 23 percent in teaching units compared to 2021. In Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, the advice/classification offer for Russian was even better accepted in September than, for example, for Italian, French, Turkish or Arabic.