On Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III crowned a Frankish king named Charlemagne Imperator Romanorum in Rome. The state that grew out of that coronation, eventually centred in German lands, called itself the Holy Roman Empire and lasted, in some form, for a thousand years until Napoleon abolished it in 1806. Voltaire described it as neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. He was being clever; the institution mattered.
Twelve short chapters trace the arc from Charlemagne to 1990. Luther's ninety-five theses on the Wittenberg church door in 1517. The Thirty Years War (1618–1648), which killed about a third of the German population. Frederick the Great's Prussia. Bismarck's unification at Versailles in 1871. Wilhelmine Germany and the rush to industry. Versailles and the long humiliation. The Weimar Republic — Bauhaus, German cinema, hyperinflation, the rise of the Nazis. The catastrophe of 1933–1945. Stunde Null, zero hour, May 8 1945. The two Germanies of the Cold War. The Wall. November 9 1989, when an East German government spokesman misread a memo at a press conference and announced, by mistake, that the borders were open immediately.
Reunification followed eleven months later. The country has now been one country longer than it was two.
German history at A2+ benefits from the same structure that makes the language tractable at this level: each chapter is one century or one moment, and the vocabulary anchors to concrete recurring nouns (the empire, the war, the wall, the chancellor). The chronology is dramatic enough to pull readers through unfamiliar names with momentum.
Late elementary. You can read longer chapters with light support. Past, present, and future tenses are comfortable. Idioms still trip you up.
Yes — every book in the Storica catalog is available in all seven supported languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Deutschland was originally written in English, but you choose your reading language when you start.
A2+. Late elementary. You can read longer chapters with light support. Past, present, and future tenses are comfortable. Idioms still trip you up.
About one month at fifteen minutes a day. The adaptation runs to 25 short chapters — short enough to read before bed, long enough to actually move your level.
No. Storica's adaptation is the version you read. We keep the characters, plot beats, and tone of the original — and rewrite the language to fit the level. If you've read the original before, you'll recognise the story; if you haven't, the adaptation is a complete reading of the book.
Pick up where you left off. There are no streaks, no penalties, and no notifications begging you back. Day 12 is still Day 12 a week later.
Deutschland is rated A2+, so we'd suggest starting with one of our A0 or A1 books first if you're brand-new to your target language. Check our shelf at /library/ — the readers there are short, gentle, and built specifically for week one.
Your first 30-day book is free. No card. No streak. Just a passage every morning.
Read it free for 7 days →A small group of readers working through classics in their target language — Kafka in German, Camus in French, Bovary in Spanish. Leave your email and we'll send your invitation.
Use this code in the app for 30% off your first year of Storica Pro.