Anyone interested in Dutch language, literature and regional studies no longer has a chance academically in southern Germany.

There are only institutes with chairs in Berlin, Duisburg-Essen, Cologne, Münster and Oldenburg – apart from the special case of Germersheim, which specializes in translation and interpreting.

Elsewhere, editorships were closed when editors retired.

What then survived were usually language centers - without the program for literature, linguistics and regional studies.

Klaus Max Smolka

Editor in Business.

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The exception so far is Frankfurt, where the Goethe University offered such a framework - albeit without a chair, with only one lecturer and embedded in the German department.

But the editor Laurette Artois – officially “teacher for special tasks” – will retire in May and her position will not be filled again.

This eliminates an editorial office whose history dates back to 1914 – according to the NLV, one of the oldest Dutch studies centers in Germany.

The other such one-person lectureships in the southern half of the country have already disappeared.

“Dutch studies have died out in southern Germany,” states Laurette Artois.

For the time being there will still be a core program in Frankfurt: two language courses and a reading course with simple literary texts.

They are awarded as teaching assignments, which the NLV considers to be a cheap option.

A university spokesman did not want to discuss the issue orally, asked for written questions and answered them in writing eight days later.

Accordingly, the shrunken program will be maintained for two years, "then it will be evaluated".

In addition, they are looking for ways to expand the offer again and have contacted the Taalunie, the Dutch-Belgian organization for the promotion of Dutch.

living philology

There was another firework display in the winter semester: a series of lectures on Dutch literature.

The important literature professors of German Dutch Studies took part, which was also seen as a sign of support for Frankfurt.

The series was largely co-organized by Artois.

Without exaggerating, she embodied Dutch Studies in Frankfurt.

What is likely to be eliminated now are the public readings with which the 65-year-old Flemish delighted citizens interested in literature: since 2009 she has been attracting writers in the first row to the Main: from Gerbrand Bakker to Margriet de Moor, from Connie Palmen to Tom Lanoye.

This was largely financed by the Taalunie.

Dutch scholars judge the state of their subject differently.

According to Taalunie, 14,000 students are enrolled in the subject abroad - 1,500 of them and thus more than ever before in Germany according to NLV information.

Since then, the number has fallen, according to faculty estimates;

there is also the question of who also graduates.

Nevertheless: "In an international comparison, Germany is still a country with a lot of Dutch studies," says NLV chairman Hans Beelen, lecturer in Oldenburg.

In a “field analysis”, the Dutch Studies Institute there and the Taalunie refer to the role of the Netherlands as Germany’s second most important trading partner.

According to the survey, German companies with contacts in the Netherlands value knowledge of Dutch, argues Beelen.

And where Dutch is a school subject,

teachers are needed.

In his estimation, “the subject is flourishing”.

Others are more reserved.

"We're still doing well in Germany, but Dutch studies are still under pressure," says Jan Konst, a professor in Berlin.

Dutch-language literature has become unusually popular in Germany over the past thirty years.

A key factor is the appearance at the book fair in 1993, when the focus was on the Netherlands and Flanders.

In 2016 they did it again.

According to the Expert Center for Literary Translation in Utrecht, an average of a hundred works were translated into German every year from 2010 to 2019, with an outlier of 260 in the 2016 fair year. You can continue to devote yourself to this lively philology at the four universities near the border and in Berlin.

In the south, the Dutch language gap will be even more painful now that the last editing there is no longer available.