Perfekt-Geschichten

Short German stories written for this library, each with an English translation beside every paragraph. Everyday settings, a small mystery or a turn at the end, and a length you can finish in one sitting.

They follow one rule: every past event is told in Perfekt, the way German is spoken. No war, no hatte, no ging. If you have learned German from conversation, or you speak it but rarely read it, the past tense sounds the way you hear it every day.

The series is graded: the A2 stories keep to common words and short sentences, the B1 stories are longer, with more dialogue and a wider vocabulary.

• Ich bin nach Hause gegangen. (I went home.), never ging
• Ich habe ihn gesehen. (I saw him.), never sah
• Es ist kalt gewesen. (It was cold.), never war

• Seite 47 (Page 47): Lena works in a quiet bookshop in Hamburg. Then a note falls out of an old novel: "For the woman with the red scarf: page 47, third sentence." Someone is writing to her, and Lena wants to know who.
• Die grüne Tür (The Green Door): After her grandfather's funeral, Lena is handed a small old key and a map of his garden, with three words underneath: "Not for Karin." Her aunt wants to sell the house, the neighbour behind the hedge has been an enemy for forty years, and somewhere in the garden a red cross is waiting.
• Zettel im Treppenhaus (Notes in the Stairwell): Every night at three, Lena is woken by the neighbour upstairs, a man she has never seen. Her angry note starts an exchange of messages that gets funnier, warmer and more mysterious every day.
• Der Hund um 8:15 Uhr (The 8:15 Dog): Every morning at exactly 8:15, a small brown dog walks into Anna's café, alone, and there is always something new tucked into its collar. A key, a button, half a photo: someone is trying to tell her something, and the old man across the street knows more than he says.
• Der graue Koffer (The Grey Suitcase): Paula grabs the wrong suitcase at Frankfurt station the night before the most important job interview of her life. Inside there are no clothes, only three thousand euros, a strange note, and something very large and very round.

• Zimmer 13 (Room 13): Every night at 2:13, the phone at the reception of a small Berlin hotel rings, and the display says: Room 13. The problem is that the hotel has no room 13.
• Nicht für Jonas (Not for Jonas): After a bitter fight with his silent father, Jonas takes his late mother's recipe book onto a TV cooking show. But the last pages of the book are glued shut, and on the first one she has written: not for Jonas, not yet.
• Die Nachricht von morgen (Tomorrow's Message): Nele buys a cheap used phone at a flea market and finds a single unheard voice message: a young woman begging for help and naming a date that is tomorrow. Then, in the middle of the night, a stranger calls and demands the phone back.
• Gezeitengeduld (Tidewait): Two translators get the same novel, but the publisher will take only one version. The rules say: not a word about the book. Nobody said anything about coffee.
• Noch nicht (Not Yet): Ten years after Lena fled her own wedding in a white dress, she returns to her Alpine village for her sister's big day. Everyone is friendly, everyone is polite, and nobody will say the one thing she needs to hear.