The Dallas Goethe Center Meetup Group

Jacob the Liar (Jakob der Lügner) is a 1974 war drama film directed by Frank Beyer, adapted by Beyer and Jurek Becker from the latter's novel of the same title.

1944, trapped in a Polish Ghetto with thousands of other Jews facing starvation or deportation to the death camps, Jacob Heym is detained one evening at Gestapo headquarters. Jakob accidentally overhears a news broadcast announcing the advancement of the Red Army. The news could give new courage to those who have lost all hope in the ghetto. In order to spread the news, Jakob has to lie about the circumstances through which he came to hear the news, as people are unlikely to believe him. Jakob heard the news, which he was never meant to learn about, in the offices of the Gestapo. He claims to have a secret radio. From then on, he is forced to come up with more news reports; the victims in the ghetto are given fresh hope and the number of suicides decreases. However, Jakob’s inventiveness can’t prevent the deportation from taking place.

In his bittersweet comedy loaded with human quirks and nuance, Jacob
invents news reports to bolster the spirits of the other Jews living in his
Polish ghetto under Nazi occupation. Jakob der Lügner was nominated
for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1977.

Please join the German International School (GISD) and the Dallas Goethe Center as we celebrate the Anniversary of German Reunification (Tag der deutschen Einheit) on Saturday, October 10th!

The celebration will take place at Chapel Hill United Methodist Church in Farmers Branch (GISD facilities and DGC location for in-person classes).

Please save the date! A program and details will follow soon.

We look forward to seeing you on Saturday, October 10 th!

The October TX Talks session, jointly sponsored by the German Texan Heritage Society and Dallas Goethe Center, will feature TAMU history professor Walter Kamphoefner, who will speak about the multilingual heritage of Texas.

Dr. Kamphoefner will put into historical perspective the perennial debate over the multicultural and multilingual history of Texas, and by extension the U.S., in light of the recent executive order declaring English as the official language of the U.S. Considering that the state constitution and laws were translated into Spanish and German with “Bohemian” soon following, TX was “officially” trilingual from its earliest days. This was reinforced by the fact that many counties taught those and other heritage languages in the public schools until effectively ended by anti-German hysteria and resurrection of the KKK in the WWI era. The initiatives for bilingual education and ballot translations some 50 years later were thus less of an innovation than a return to a 19th century tradition.

The presentation will be on Tuesday, 10/13 at 7:00 p.m.