Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday inaugurated the own building of the Goethe-Zentrum in the city to house Germany’s language centre and the office of the Honorary Consul. Speaking after inaugurating the new centre located at Jawahar Nagar, he said that the relationship between Kerala and Germany dated back to the 19th Century with the arrival of the Basel Mission in Kozhikode.
It had contributed significantly to the progress of Malabar in the areas of education, industry and social transformation. He also recalled the contributions of Hermann Gundert who compiled a Malayalam grammar book ‘Malayalabhaasha Vyakaranam’.
He said that with the signing of the Triple Win Agreement between India and the German Federal Employment Agency in December 2021 to recruit 1,500 nurses from Kerala, Goethe-Zentrum, which was set up in Thiruvananthapuram and later in Kochi, became the official partner to provide German language training to these candidates.
Certificate exams
He expressed happiness over the fact that 30,000 candidates wrote the Goethe-Certificate examinations at both these centres in Kerala. Thus, Kerala has become the pioneer in India to partner directly with Germany for fair and ethically correct migration of human resources.
H.E. Achim Burkart, German Consul General and Regional Director of the Goethe-Institut (South Asia), Shashi Tharoor, MP, Chief Secretary V.Venu, Mayor Arya Rajendran, V.K.Prasanth, MLA, Marla Stukenberg, Chief South Asia Region Director of the Goethe-Institut, Syed Ibrahim, Honorary Consul and Director of Goethe Zentrum Trivandrum and Kochi also attended the inaugural ceremony.
For 15 years
Part of the worldwide network of Goethe-Institut, the official language and cultural institute of Germany, the Zentrum has been functioning in the city for 15 years now. It is managed by the Indo-German Language and Cultural Society. The centre provides consular assistance to hundreds of people migrating to Germany, including language training and certifying signatures and copies of documents.
Starting with roughly 400 students in Kerala, it now enrols more than 5,600 students yearly, helping them learn German and write the Goethe-Certificate exams.
