Vernissage ‘Faces of the World | Portraits of Languages’

A PORTRAIT OF ANSPRECHBAR – An exhibition of portraits of people introducing their mother tongue.

We warmly invite you to the exhibition opening at the Goethe-Institut Dresden. This unique place of learning and experience brings together people who want to learn German, get to know Germany and engage with Germans. And this, despite the fact that German is, as we all know, not exactly an easy language. Over the past 30 years, more than 35,000 people from all over the world have learnt German here. They arrived speaking different languages, from different cultures and with different customs, and they all left with the same question: “Why do we say ‘der’, ‘die’ or ‘das’?”

“Ansprechbar” Approachable to personal stories

The exhibition features portraits of people from various countries who now live in Dresden and for whom German is not their mother tongue. It showcases the city’s cultural diversity and highlights creative ways of dealing with day-to-day challenges.

To accompany the exhibition, a new interview magazine is being published, bringing together all the portraits from previous years.

In our projects „Dresden spricht…“ (2024) and „ANSPRECHBAR“ (2025), we pricked up our ears and opened our eyes. On the street, in cafés, at the kitchen table. We spoke to people who speak different native languages. To people who find it difficult to express themselves clearly. We spoke to blind people, for whom language is vital for exploring the world.

The Goethe-Institut: one of the most international venues in Dresden

As well as the language classes themselves, the Institute’s staff are committed to helping course participants gain an insight into life and culture in Dresden. Getting to know and appreciate one another is at least as important as the language itself: people from a wide variety of countries and cultures spend weeks, sometimes months, together here, and in doing so discover just how much they have in common.

It’s exciting when you listen carefully and keep the conversation going. So… let’s have a chat!

The ANSPRECHBAR exhibitions showcase 24 people from Dresden, all of whom link their own stories and experiences to their languages, regardless of whether they grew up in Dresden or moved there. They talk about this in interviews and have each written down a proverb for us in their mother tongue.

Further information on the individual languages can be found in our magazines „Dresden spricht… viele Sprachen“ and „Dresden ist … #ANSPRECHBAR“, or directly from our projects „Dresden spricht…“ (2024) and „ANSPRECHBAR“ (2025).