An annual German Day event can be a powerful tool to motivate students, increase visibility of state and local German programs, and, ultimately, boost enrollments. However, it can also be a daunting undertaking that is often orchestrated by a single person. This article offers a user guide that can help others plan their own German Day, be it a university‐hosted statewide event or contained within a single school district and offered at a high school. Written from the dual perspective of hosts and participating teachers, this article provides instructions and insights into the basics of the event and its composite parts as well as logistical information. Sample events and schedules are included for those who wish to host their own German Day. States with existing German Days might learn from the experiences described and use new ideas to invigorate their own events.

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Monika Maron’s Animal Triste (1996) was widely understood as a response to German unification. This reading of Maron’s critically acclaimed novel places the text in the context of the literary discourse of the so-called New World. The United States have long enticed the German literary imagination and have served as a screen for projections of (utopian) promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The narrator’s exploration of her freedom, symbolized in a trip to New York City, are juxtaposed with feelings of imprisonment, expressed through seemingly endless remembering. Maron’s novel connects with the tradition of German writing about love, another powerful trope of freedom and captivity, and resonates with other women’s writing about the U.S. after 1989.

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