In addition to the interdisciplinary B.A. degree course ‘Philosophy, Literature and Linguistics’ and the M.A. in ‘German Studies and General Literary Studies’, the institute also offers teacher training courses in German at grammar schools and comprehensive schools or vocational colleges. A unique selling point nationally is the teaching and research area in European-Jewish Literature and Cultural History, set up to create an appropriate position for Jewish authors constitutive of literatures in the German language.

The institute maintains Erasmus partnerships with institutes in Ghent, Graz, Opava, Paris, Reims and Udine.

Digital access to the usual specialist databases via the university network. Digital licences to a vast amount of recent research literature.

Research at the institute focuses on topics such as German-language Jewish literature from the Enlightenment to the present day, the relationship between literature and forms of knowledge, the philology of mediaeval editions and systematic reading support. Currently, habilitation theses are being written on the cultures of things and materials of the fin-de-siècle, on the mediology of olfaction in German and French literature (1750-1914), on the narrative poetology of the example in the Enlightenment, and on new methods for the analysis of medieval German collections of small texts.