Sprechen Sie Deutsch? If not, then you can now learn it or practice your der , die und das throughout April during the German Language Month in Latvia.
The joint initiative of three German-speaking countries is part of ambitious efforts to encourage more people in Latvia learn and understand the language of Goethe and Schiller.
The way to someone’s heart is through the stomach, as an old German saying goes. And that is what the ambassadors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland obviously also remembered when kicking off the German Language Month in Latvia on 3 April 2025.
Equipped with a cooking apron, oven gloves and kitchen utensils, the envoys from the three Germanophone countries joined forces and prepared traditional dishes from their home countries at the premises of Riga Tourism and Creative Industries Technical School (RTRIT) together with German-learning students of the RTRIT and the Āgenskalns Primary School.
In a state-of-the-art demonstration kitchen used for training future chefs and food professionals, the ambassadors provided hands-on classes and walked the kids together with their embassy staff through the preparation of three essential breakfast staples in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
“It has been quite an adventure for me. I was for the first time in such a big kitchen, where I was allowed to lend a hand myself,“ German ambassador Gudrun Masloch admitted after the cooking class that happened in a fun and friendly setting at three catering counters, each marked with the flag of its respective country.
While Masloch was showing off to the students how to bake different types of Frühstücksbrötchen (buns and bread rolls) that are essential for a typical weekend morning breakfast in Germany, her Austrian colleague Bernadette Klösch engaged in preparing Kaiserschmarren (literally: Emperor’s pancake) – a sweet, fluffy pancake with raisins that is shredded into bite-sized pieces. “It is a food classic par excellence. Everyone in Austria knows it and it is also on every menu in ski lodges in the mountains“, she explained, before finishing up the dish together with two little helpers by dusting it with powdered sugar.
On the neighbouring table, Swiss ambassador Martin Michelet could be seen rolling out yeast dough into long strands. “This is going to be a Zopf which is traditionally enjoyed on Sunday mornings. A Sunday without a Zopf is unthinkable for many Swiss“, he explained, before carefully braiding the strands into a loaf and then placed it on a baking-paper-lined tray. “We now have to let it rise, before we glaze it with an egg mixture and then put in the pre-heated oven“, Michelet pointed out to the students that assisted him, adding that the result is going to be “really delicious“.
Joining the diplomats in the food preparation were 12-year-old Pēteris and 11-year-old Anēte from the Āgenskalns Primary School. The two fifth-graders were both excited and nervous during their culinary journey. “I was not quite sure what to expect from the result but it was really tasty“, Anete said about her first self-made Kaiserschmarren.
Pēteris gave also a clear thumbs up for the Austrian delicacy that seemed to be the most popular dish during the subsequent joint breakfast as well, especially among those with a sweet tooth.
Maybe it was because Team Austria received a helping hand from its Honorary Consul in Latvia: Bernhard Loew, the general manager of the five star Grand Palace Hotel in Riga, shared his tips and tricks for preparing a perfectly fluffy Kaiserschmarren. His professional competence was difficult to counterbalance by the teams of the other two embassies, even though the Swiss diplomats had previously practiced how to make a Zopf and explored the different braiding technique, as Michelet revealed.
Yet the three embassies were anyway far from being competitive or having a kitchen battle. Together they filled the kitchen with the comforting aroma of a bakery. “Three countries. No conflicts. All fine. Everyone did well and made great dishes“, RTRIT German language teacher Tamara Makalane commented with a laugh, when welcoming some guests for the joint breakfast at a RTRIT event space where the three ambassadors presented the program for the German Language Month.
The joint initiative, run by the three embassies in cooperation with the Goethe- Institut in Riga and several other partners, wants to bring Latvians closer to the German language. About 60 different events will take place in 15 cities around Latvia and are aimed at pupils, their parents, teachers, students, as well as anyone interested in learning German or more about the culture of German-speaking countries.
The program includes exhibitions, film screenings, discussions, competitions, quizzes, readings, creative workshops, sports activities and informative seminars – the full details are available on the Goethe-Institut’s website .
Latvia has traditionally had close ties to Germany, ever since its capital city Riga was founded by the German Bishop Albert from Bremen in 1201. For almost 700 years, German culture and language had dominated in what is now Latvia, before most of the remaining Germans were forced to leave the country in 1939 following the Hitler-Stalin-pact, and after the Second World War only a few Germans were living in Soviet-occupied Latvia.
These were difficult times: Being German was nothing to be proud of in the Soviet Union and German culture and traditions were suppressed from public life under the communist regime.
However, German continued to be taught as a foreign language under Soviet rule, since Latvia maintained mutual relations and cultural ties with communist East Germany. This resulted in a grown and renewed interest in the language of Goethe and Schiller in Latvia after the country regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
German enjoyed a temporary renaissance in the 1990s – and any potential lingering historical reservations about the language were replaced by the gravitational pull of Europe’s largest economy and German investments in Central and Eastern Europe following the EU’s eastward expansion.
Over the last decades, the relevance of German has gradually declined in Latvia and like in many other countries it was swiftly pushed aside by the easier-to-learn global language, English. While knowing the Anglo-Saxon lingua franca is a must and the first foreign language in Latvia, mastering German has become a matter of preference. But not by that many students: data from the Ministry of Education and Science (IZM) show that Russian is atill the language most often chosen and taught as a second foreign language at Latvian schools.
English and Russian may be still the most spoken foreign languages in Latvia, but if you listen carefully in the classrooms and school corridors you will find German on the rise again. In the last school year 2023/2024, almost 40,000 people in Latvia have been learning the language, according to data from the Ministry of Education and Science. Compared with the previous school year of 2022/2023, this is an increase of 44 percent. Einfach unglaublich!
The main reason for the fact that the country seems to have re-engaged with the language in a way not seen since the establishment of the Goethe Institut in Riga in 1993 is the Latvian education reform. Or better put: The gradual phasing out of Russian at Latvian schools.
Russian has already no longer been a language of instruction since 2023 and soon will also not be offered as foreign language anymore. Starting from 1 September 2026 only official languages of the EU or the European Economic Area will be taught . German in particular has been benefiting from the move away from Russian and will likely become by the second most important foreign language.
“The Interest in the German language is growing steadily in Latvia. This is related to the school reform”, Masloch said in her speech at the opening of the German Language Month. “We know from many schools that they would like to offer German as a foreign language as an additional course. There is already a wide range of options, but there is a lot of interest in offering even more. In surveys, students have also expressed interest in more German being taught.”
The German ambassador’s assessment amidst freshly baked delicacies is confirmed by both hard data and empirical evidence. In a survey conducted by the IZM 401 of 450 schools indicated they would replace Russian with German.
“Basically 90 percent of schools stated that German will be the second foreign language they intend to offer in the future. One-fifth will also offer French, and about 20 percent will offer Spanish”, IZM Parliamentary Secretary Silvija Amatniece told LSM. “Therefore, German currently will be the absolute predominant language in our schools.”
At the Āgenskalns Primary School in Riga this is already the case. It is one of the few schools in Latvia where pupils like Pēteris and Anēte start learning the German language in depth from the first grade.
“We have a lot of demand, we are not able to take in all in the first classes”, said German language teacher Kaiva Kugrēne, while she observed her students baking and communicating in German with the embassy staff in the RTRIT demonstration kitchen.
Attentively she also listened when her students are asked why they are learning German and how they like it. Being among diplomats and the watchful eyes and ears of their teacher, both Pēteris and Anete answered to consider German to be an “interesting language“ and possibly useful for their future.
All the German-speaking countries are geographically not that far away from Latvia and good locations for studying or working, they pointed out while stirring the dough. Whereas many of the other students present gave similar answers, Kugrēne pointed out yet another reason why children are attending classes at her school. “We have many pupils from families where the parents have graduated from German schools“, Kugrēne said, adding that these parents consider it self-evident that their children should also become German speakers. “This is somehow a tradition.“
Despite the newly-gained interest among schools and students, the gradual switch from Russian to German still poses a major challenge for the Latvian education system. “The demand for German is there, but teachers are missing. Many are already at an advanced age and there are not enough of them“, Kugrēne said, adding that at least for the time being her school is in a fortunate position. “We currently do not lack teachers, but there have been moments where we also did not have enough.“
Other schools, especially in the countryside, are struggling and the situation is most likely not going to change any time soon. The gap is large: German is currently taught by around 600 teachers at Latvian schools, but 300 more will be needed by the school year 2026/27, according to estimates of the IZM. Whether this demand can be met is more than unclear, since training prospective foreign language teachers takes time. But Amatniece remains optimistic and refers to several initiatives of her ministry that aim to provide solutions.
One of them is a joint declaration of intent signed between the IZM and the German embassy in Riga in May 2024 on an accelerated training of German language teachers at the Goethe Institut in Riga. The program called “Getting started with German” aims to qualify up to 140 teachers of other subjects with a good basic knowledge of German by summer 2026 for teaching German in Latvian schools.
A key feature of the agreement is that teachers educated at Germany’s main cultural outpost will receive an officially state-recognised qualification for teaching German at Latvian schools
“We currently have 20 teachers in our qualification program and want to have 20 more this year. And we hope that there will be many more so that motivating German lessons can be offered at many schools across the country“, Jan Sprenger, head of the language department at the Goethe-Institut in Riga, told LSM, adding that the idea is to educate teachers in such a way that they will be able to train other German teachers themselves.
Germany is covering the costs for the project coordination and also provides scholarships for the participants, who will thus be able to take part in the program free of charge. The interest has been high: 35 people applied for 20 available spots of the first course that started in autumn 2024, according to Sprenger, who is full of praise for the participants and the close cooperation with the IZM while developing and implementing the program.
Based on a modular approach and tailored to the needs of the participants, the workshops of the training program are taking place mainly online, but also in present at the Goethe-Institut where the teachers are finding themselves back at the school desk. Among them is Dace Spāre from Valmiera, who is teaching German at the Trikāta Elementary School and other educational institutions in the region.
“We need to improve our German skills. And we need to learn how to teach German in a way that students learn the language effectively and with joy“, she described the motivation of herself and many other teachers for joining the program.
The Goethe-Institut in general seems positively surprised about this one-off chance for training German language teacher, but lifting professionals with some knowledge of German into working proficiency is one thing. Ultimately reaching out to students and other people is another, especially with a language that is not the most welcoming for newcomers and notorious for its grammar, syntax and compound word constructions.
The American writer Mark Twain once dismissed German even as such a difficult language that “only the dead have time to learn.“
The ambassadors of Germany, Austria and Switzerland were thus quick at the opening of the German Language Month to underline the advantages of German for those who dare to try mastering it. By learning German one can broaden horizons, discover new countries and improve career prospects, they said as they encouraged the audience to take on the challenge.
Calling it “an adventure and an intellectual, cultural and educational experience”, Swiss envoy Martin Michelet even gave some own personal first-hand insight into the art of learning German.
“As you can hear, German is not my mother tongue and I learned it as a foreign language at school. So I can talk about the fun, but also the effort needed of llearning German”, Michelet said in German with a slight Swiss French accent, adding that German is one of the four official languages in his home country and he has started to learn it at a young age in school.
While explaining how he learned his first German words at the breakfast table at home, Michelet advocated for multilingualism not only “part of the Swiss DNA“ but also something that is of benefit for everyone.
“Europe is built not only by institutions and politicians, but above all by human and cultural contacts“, he said. “Learning a European language, such as German, also means contributing to the development of our continent.“
