German is, with over 90 million native speakers, the most widely spoken language in Western Europe, and Germany is second only to the United States as a trading partner to the United Kingdom. We will help you to become highly proficient in writing, reading, speaking and listening to contemporary German, but also help you to understand the society, history, politics, linguistics, culture, literature and cinema of Germany, Switzerland and Austria.German graduates are some of the most highly sought after by employers and our German students are particularly well-placed to achieve their full potential in the workplace. We have excellent links with a wide-range of German employers across all sectors: from financial to energy companies, manufacturers to retailers, including AbeBooks, Bayer Pharma AG, Bloomberg, Google, Henkel, Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, Pysma, Siemens, KERN Global Language Services, Bosch and Zänker & Kollegen.These links are used frequently to help students find work placements on the year abroad or to secure graduate jobs.Whilst the perfection of language skills is at the heart of modern languages degrees in Liverpool, all our degrees demand a full intellectual engagement with a wide selection of areas in German studies. We research and teach German culture, literature and film in the 19th to 21st centuries, the Holocaust, contemporary Berlin, linguistics and translation, and much more.Our students participate in a number of extracurricular activities, including the regular writer-in-residence programme, the annual translation workshop organised across the Department and the Sauerkraut Cup inter-university football tournament run by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). They regularly win prestigious DAAD Summer School Grants.