Photographer unknown, 1917 (public domain)
Free German reading, level B2-C1
Read Kafka's Das Urteil in the original German
A single evening, one letter, and a verdict that arrives faster than any German sentence should let it.
Learn German with this book for freeDas Urteil is Kafka at his most compressed: a single evening, one long looping sentence after another, and a verdict that arrives with almost no warning. Lira keeps the original text exactly as Kafka wrote it, but every unfamiliar word is one tap away from a translation, and every word you look up gets scheduled for review so it actually sticks. Short enough to read in one sitting, dense enough to reward a second one.
Key vocabulary from Das Urteil
A preview of the words you'll run into early on, with pronunciation. Every one of them, and every other word you tap while reading, gets saved to your review deck automatically.
das Urteil
judgment, verdict, sentence
verurteilen
to sentence, condemn
ertrinken
to drown
der Vater
father
der Freund
friend
der Kaufmann
merchant, businessman
What actually happens while you read
One tap to translate
Click any unfamiliar word for its contextual translation, right inside the page. No dictionary tab, no losing your place in the story.
Every word saved with its sentence
The word you looked up keeps the exact sentence you found it in, not an isolated flashcard, so the meaning stays anchored to real context.
FSRS brings it back before you forget
Spaced repetition schedules each word's next review right before you'd naturally lose it, so vocabulary from this book actually stays with you.
Es war an einem Sonntagvormittag im schönsten Frühjahr. Georg Bendemann, ein junger , saß in seinem Privatzimmer im ersten Stock eines der niedrigen, Häuser, die entlang des Flusses in einer langen Reihe, fast nur in der Höhe und unterschieden, sich hinzogen.
TRANSLATION
merchant, businessman
CONTEXT
Es war an einem Sonntagvormittag im schönsten Frühjahr. Georg Bendemann, ein junger Kaufmann, saß in seinem Privatzimmer im ersten Stock eines der niedrigen, leichtgebauten Häuser, die entlang des Flusses in einer langen Reihe, fast nur in der Höhe und Färbung unterschieden, sich hinzogen.
Start reading free →The science
Recognizing a word isn't the same as remembering it
According to Stephen Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis, a language is acquired durably through exposure to content you mostly already understand, not through isolated word lists. Reading a real book supplies exactly that kind of exposure. Spaced repetition on top of it is what turns a word you translated once into one you actually remember weeks later.
Learning approach
Retention with Lira
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