German

Hallo! Ich heiße Henning und ich bin Deutschlehrer. Schön, dich kennenzulernen. I was born in Essen, Germany, and began learning new languages as soon as the opportunity presented itself—starting with English, Latin, and Hebrew in Gymnasium—and followed by Persian (Fârsi) and Arabic at the University of Hamburg. I also picked up Modern Greek on the side. Later I went on to study Sanskrit, Vedic, Avestan, and Comparative Indo-European Philology at UCLA. At some point I also found time to learn French. So, I’ve always loved languages.

I first taught German in Hamburg in a shelter for underage refugees, back in the earlier nineties. I’ve also taught Persian at UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (an amazingly beautiful historic campus!), and the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA. But I was eager to return to teaching my native language, so in 2010 I became an instructor at the Goethe-Institut in San Francisco. More recently, I have also taught courses in German language and culture at the University of San Francisco.

A lot of my students seem to think that learning German is too much work, but I enjoy showing them that not only is not too difficult, but it’s also a ton of fun. If you’re interested in learning German with me, I’d love to show you, too. Bis bald!