Tag Archives: MGV

The 8th Congress of the Central European Association of Germanists (MGV) was held at the Faculty of Teacher Education University of Zagreb from 17th to 19th September 2026.

The congress was supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Goethe-Institut Zagreb. It brought together more than a hundred presenters from 18 countries – Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Spain to Finland, Poland, Italy, Spain to Hungery, Romania, Kazakhstan, Georgia, etc. The topic of the congress was Digital Turning Points in Language, Culture, and Literature: Challenges for German Studies. The central focus the discussions was how digitalization and artificial intelligence are transforming language, literature, culture, and German language teaching.

Keynote lectures were delivered by:

Prof. Dr. Marion Grein (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) who thematized AI in teaching German as a foreign language.

Prof. Emer. Zygfryd Gehrmann (Center for German and European Studies, Zagreb) who spoke about cultural transmission in the era of globalization.

Prof. Dr. Georg Schuppener (Comenius University Bratislava / Cyril and Methodius University in Trnava) whose talk was on the possibilities and limits of AI in text comprehension.

The program was further enriched by the well-known Croatian author Prof. Dr. Kristian Novak, who thematized writing novels with the help of AI, and Dr. Martina Wörgötter Peck, who gave a speech at the opening of the exhibition dedicated to Stefan Zweig.

The academic working sessions covered five sections: linguistics, literature, cultural studies, glottodidactics, and an English language section. Alongside the academic program, participants attended the opening of the exhibition dedicated to the famous Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, enjoyed an excellent concert by Margareta Klobučar and Stipe Bilić, and concluded their visit with a guided tour of the city of Zagreb.

With the conclusion that digital changes present both a challenge and an opportunity, the congress successfully confirmed the Faculty of Teacher Education’s position as a recognized center for German studies research and international cooperation.