German Stories for Beginners (10 Collections of 150+ Stories)
by Marissa Blaszko · December 23, 2021
German stories are a fantastic language learning resource for beginners.
With their growth in popularity in recent years, language learners can find a huge number of German stories for beginners and intermediate learners, but unfortunately the quality is wildly dramatic.
In this article, I’ll compare some of the most popular German short stories, books, and graded readers so you can chart your own German reading plan!
But first, let’s go over how you can use stories to learn German.
Just so you know, this list has plenty of free German stories for beginners, but some of the links are also affiliated links, meaning I may earn a small commission of any purchases you make at no cost to you. (But that never influences what I recommend.)
Learning German with stories for beginners
Over the past decade, the theory of comprehensible input in language learning has seen a huge resurgence since it was first introduced by linguist Stephen Krashen in the 1980s.
However many people, including me, have seen 4 decades of opposing evidence that shows that input alone isn’t enough.
No matter how you want to use German stories in your language learning journey, here are a few tips from both sides of the debate that will help you tremendously.
- Decide if you’re reading German stories extensively or intensively. If you understand 98% of the words on every page (which is easy enough to count), feel free to fly that through that book! [source] However, if you understand less than that? You’ll likely want to be looking up words as you go and reading much more slowly. Either way is fine and has its advantages–but you’ll want to plan a strategy before jumping into your new German stories.
- Consider reviewing new vocabulary with spaced repetition. If you want new vocabulary to stick, consider writing it down and occasionally revisiting it. I love apps like Memrise and Anki because they take on a lot of the organizational load in language learning, but you could even just take notes that you intend to study once a week for a certain amount of time. Whatever works for you!
- Add writing prompts. To really work on production, write summaries or journal entry after every German story (or chapter of each story). Want some creative language learning writing prompts? Check out our list here.
- Have fun. You’ll be a lot more motivated to keep up with your language studies if you’re choosing German stories you actually like, so above all follow your heart.
For more foreign language reading strategies, check out our complete evidence-based guide.
German Stories for Beginners
Format: Bilingual Short Stories
Genre: Children’s / Fairy Tales
Length: 10 short stories
Language Level: Beginner grammar, intermediate vocabulary
Price: Free online
2 Sentence Summary: These bilingual (and free) classic tales use illustrations and optional translations to help readers make sense of the texts. While much of the vocabulary is low-frequency and specific to the genre, they’re a fun way to dip your toes into some intensive reading in German.
Language Learning Notes: Have fun with these! While you might not need most of these super-specific words in day-to-day conversations, they’re a nice start for anyone who is looking forward to reading German literature as their level increases.
Format: Short Stories
Genre: Children’s / Fairy Tales
Length: 12 short stories, written + audio
Language Level: Beginner grammar, intermediate vocabulary
Price: Free online
2 Sentence Summary: Want to keep practicing the vocabulary specific to fantasy stories? These stories in “leichter sprache” (simplified language”) will help you build on your progress from Fabel Cottage German stories.
Language Learning Notes: The nice thing about Fabel Cottage (which was listed above) is how the text is bilingual at a click. This site, on the flip side, is monolingual German–but with audio files. Use it to level up your vocabulary if fairy tales are something that interests you!
2 Sentence Summary: Want to practice reading more practical German? The Dino series is full of realistic, practical conversations that are easy to read and extensive enough to get you to the next level.
Language Learning Notes: These books are great. Consider mining them for full sentences and using them in combination with a German flashcard app like Anki.
2 Sentence Summary: André Klein, author of the super-popular Dino Lernt Deutsch series, has released a choose-your-own-adventure-styled fantasy series! Participate in sword fights, dodge monsters, and try to skirt death…. auf Deutsch!
Language Learning Notes: If you read this list of German short stories in the order in which the collections are listed here, this book will build on the grammar and vocabulary of the earlier series so you can move forward with confidence (and fun).
2 Sentence Summary: Want to step it up? The LingoMastery books provide simple-to-follow short stories written for learners, but with increasingly complicated time tenses and grammatical structures.
Language Learning Notes: While even the “beginner” books in the LingoMastery series are more intermediate-leveled, they’re more practical than some of their fantasy books on this list and a good next-step from the Dino books.
2 Sentence Summary: Want to try a challenge? These real short stories will be a challenge for any German learner, but with their side-by-side English translation can be a useful tool in furthering your understanding of the language and it’s grammar.
Language Learning Notes: These German stories will be less-practical as pleasure-reads and more practical as active learning exercises. If your goal is to read at a high level of German, you’ll likely enjoy the challenge.
Hörbücher on Spotify
Format: Audiobooks
Genre: Misc
Length: n/a
Language Level: Intermediate – Advanced
Price: free with Spotify subscription
2 Sentence Summary: Want to hear stories read to you? Search “hörbücher” (“audiobooks”) on Spotify and take your pick!
Language Learning Notes: There are hundreds (if not thousands) of German story audiobooks on Spotify, but here are a few I recommend:
Hörbücher für Kinder by Julian (massive German kids story playlist)
Hörbücher für Kinder by Anna (another massive kids’ playlist)
Horror & Mystery Hörspiele & Hörbücher (a classic horror playlist with each segment broken up into 1-3min tracks)
- Der Kleine Prinz (The Little Prince, broken up into segments)
2 Sentence Summary: Olly Richard’s Short Stories books are translations of stories perfect for very low-level beginners. They combine high-frequency vocabulary and stories with predictable plots, plus include quizzes and vocabulary lists for comprehension.
Language Learning Notes: Olly’s book of German short stories is probably the easiest of all the resources on the list. However, all of his story books are mass-translated from an original English text, so the big downside is once you’ve read them in one language you’re probably not going to be as interested in picking it up in another.
Format: Short stories
Genre: 1800s short fiction
Length: 40+ short stories
Language Level: Intermediate
Price: free online
2 Sentence Summary: This site screams early-internet nostalgia, but hopefully it never goes down. Navigate between English and German versions, quizzes, illustrations, and wordlists in this literary grab-bag.
Language Learning Notes: Don’t let the difficult navigation on this site scare you off. There are a ton of amazing resources here for both independent learners and teachers to help incorporate German stories into any language learning plan.
Format: Magazines, novels, and audiobooks
Genre: Fiction and non-fiction
Length: n/a
Language Level: Intermediate-Advanced
Price: free with account creation
2 Sentence Summary: Want to slowly move to native-level content? Check out the massive literature collection from the Goethe Institute, no matter where you are in the world.
Language Learning Notes: When you’re ready to move onto materials written for natives, this library is a gem. Did you know most popular magazines are written at a B1/B2 level? Make sure to check them out as you graduate to harder materials, or see their free German learning resources until then!
Going Beyond Short Stories for Learning German
Want more German learning fun? Here are a few other articles we suggest checking out:
Love the collection 🙂 Thanks for posting. You can also try childhood-stories.com. Its free and contains over 200 simple German + English dual language short stories and many with slow German audio 🙂 Most of the stories are one page in length and quite fun to read.
Thanks Vivek! Will check that out soon and potentially add that to my list the next time I update it 🙂