German C1 Reading Texts

Texts where you already know most of the words. Otherwise you are decoding, not reading. The 50 texts here were picked by measuring exactly that: the easiest covers 100% of its running words with C1 vocabulary, the typical one 100%.

About 50 words each, or 1 minutes at a careful learner's pace. Short on purpose: a text you finish and reread twice does more than a long one you abandon.

The first C1 text is free, with no account. The other 49 are for members, $7 a month on Patreon, or lifetime access bought once.

Read the German first with the translation hidden, and only reveal a line when you are genuinely stuck. The toggle at the top of every text does this in one click. The point is to make yourself guess before you check.

No. Coverage tops out around 90% even at C2 because a quarter of the running words in any real text fall outside a 15,003-word list entirely: names, compounds, technical terms. In every text the words above your level are marked where they occur, and one tap opens the entry.