Sixteen students from various German universities will stay in Moldova for three weeks, attending a summer school organized by the Moldova-Institut Leipzig, the State University of Moldova’s History and Philosophy Department and the German Academic Exchange Program (DAAD). The school started on Thursday, August 25, and the program includes Romanian language classes, excursions throughout the country and meetings with officials and civil society representatives, IPN reports.
Project coordinator Jan-Peter Abraham observed that this is the 8th edition of the summer school. Every year, the topic changes and this summer the school is about “Multi-ethnicity and regionalism in Moldova: historical, cultural and social aspects”. The goal of the project is to help German students learn more about Moldova and to improve their communications skills. According to him, the students are also collecting information for their university theses.
The Romanian language teachers are Violeta Crudu and Alexei Axan. The latter told IPN that the students passed a preliminary test and it showed that half of them already know some Romanian and simply want to improve their skills. The others will start from zero. He says that previous summer schools showed that Germans and Europeans in general are good at learning new languages.
Hubertus Wester-Ebbinghaus, a German student, says he heard about Moldova while studying in Romania. He was very curious about the other country, besides Romania, where the Romanian language is spoken. His interest was also fueled by pro-unification slogans he had heard, like “Basarabia – Romanian land”. He also wanted to learn about the ethnic minorities in Moldova and is enthusiastic about the trips to Bender and Tiraspol, Tvardiţa, Comrat etc.
Another student, Julius Herzog, said he also heard about Moldova while volunteering in Romania. It’s his first time here and he wants to improve his Romanian language skills.
The program is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) within the “go east – Sommerschulen” Program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). It was started in 2009 by the head of Moldova-Institut Leipzig, professor and academician Klaus Bochmann, and is meant to act as a bridge between students from both countries and to increase the interest of German graduate and PhD students in Moldova and the Romanian language.
