The German major at Beijing Foreign Studies University was established in March 1950, and is one of the earliest German majors established after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

After its establishment, the German major was successively affiliated to the German-French Group, German-French Department, and German-Spanish-French Department. In 1959, the Department of German was established. In 1963, the Department was merged into the Department of Eastern European Languages. In 1981, the Department of German was reestablished, eventually being upgraded to a school at the end of March 2019. 

The school now has 32 faculty members, including 29 full-time teachers, seven professors (two doctoral supervisors), 11 associate professors, and 11 lecturers. There are currently 305 undergraduate students, 130 master's students and 21 doctoral students (as of the 2020-2021 academic year). 

Over the last 71 years, the teachers and students of the school have played a pioneering role in the development of the German discipline. They published the first German textbook, the first Chinese-German dictionary, the first journal for German learning and the first national research report for German learning.

Currently, the school is conducting academic research in five fields of foreign languages and literature, and is providing courses in German Literature, German Linguistics, Translation, German Diplomacy, German Economics, and Cross-Cultural Studies. It has formed a complete and complementary academic system, and has achieved fruitful academic results.

The school has promoted reforms and has distinctive characteristics in teaching. The textbook "Studienweg Deutsch", compiled by its teachers, was selected as a national textbook for the 10th Five-Year Plan(2001-05), the 11th Five-Year Plan(2006-10) and the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15)periods, and has been widely praised, being used in colleges and universities across the country.

In 2005, the "German Economy Course Series" won the second prize in the National Teaching Achievement Award. It was the first time for the German teaching to win such a national award. In 2014, the project "Reform and Practice of the Training Model of Interdisciplinary and Internationalized German Professionals" once again won second prize in the National Teaching Achievement Award. The "Dynamic Multi-Course System" proposed by the project broadens the connotations of the German Language and Literature discipline, proposes German teaching with Chinese characteristics, and lays a practical and theoretical foundation for obtaining the international discourse power of German teaching.

The school has cultivated many outstanding interdisciplinary German professionals from all walks of life. From 2007 to 2019, its undergraduate students have won the national championships and first place in individual events in the Nationaler Debattierwettbewerb für Germanistikstudierende, jointly organized by the German Teaching Subcommittee of the Foreign Language and Literature Teaching Committee of the Ministry of Education and Goethe-Institut.

The master’s students have won first prize in German consecutive interpretation in the National Multilingual Interpretation Contest for six consecutive years, from 2015 to 2020.

The school attaches great importance to internationalization. It has recruited many long-term foreign experts from Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, and has established inter-school cooperations with many well-known universities in German-speaking countries, such as Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Universität Passau, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and Universität Wien.

Relying on the China Scholarship Council, the school has launched a number of dual degree master’s programs in cooperation with German universities. At the same time, the school has cooperated with Universität Mannheim and Institut für Deutsche Sprache in dual doctoral training.

Since its establishment, the scholars of the school have served as leaders of national academic institutions in German teaching organization, research and guidance, and have made outstanding contributions to the development of the German discipline in China.

Tel: 010-88816516   Email: bwdyxb@bfsu.edu.cn