Which German graded readers are really A1, A2 and B1?
The two best-known German story books “for beginners”, by Olly Richards and Lingo Mastery, start at A2, not A1. For true A1, use readers from German publishers, which give a level for each title: Hueber’s Lese-Novelas, Klett’s Leo & Co. at Stufe 1, or the A1 titles in Klett’s Easy Readers.
German graded readers by level: what the publishers say
German is easier to sort than Spanish. The readers we checked from the German publishers Klett and Hueber give a CEFR level for each title. The labels to read closely are on story books written in English for English speakers, where “beginners” usually means someone who has finished a first course. The table lists the levels as each publisher or author states them.
| Series or book | What it is | Word on the cover | CEFR level stated | Where the level is stated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short Stories in German for Beginners Olly Richards, Teach Yourself | Eight original short stories | Beginners | A2–B1 | Publisher’s description; author’s site |
| Short Stories in German for Intermediate Learners Olly Richards, Teach Yourself | Longer stories | Intermediate | B1–B2 | Author’s site |
| German Short Stories for Beginners Lingo Mastery | 20 short stories | Beginners | A2+ | Publisher’s site |
| Learn German with Stories (Dino lernt Deutsch) André Klein, LearnOutLive | A series of short story books about one character, Dino; the first, Café in Berlin, has 10 stories | Beginners | A1/A2 at the start, rising to B1/B2 by the last volume | Series page on LearnOutLive’s site; no level per volume |
| Baumgartner & Momsen André Klein, LearnOutLive | A detective series in five episodes | For intermediate learners (series page) | B1/B2 | Series page on LearnOutLive’s site |
| First German Reader for Beginners Lisa Katharina May and Vadym Zubakhin | Bilingual book: German and English text on the same page, with online audio | Beginners; A1 A2 in the title | A1 course, then A2 course | Title and publisher’s description |
| Lese-Novelas Hueber | Short novellas, one story per book, written for learners | Level on each book | A1 | Series description on each title |
| Leo & Co. Klett | Stories set in Germany, for teenage and adult learners | Stufe and level on each book | A1, A2 and B1, by title | Publisher’s catalogue |
| Easy Readers (DaF) Klett | German-language novels, abridged; short stories and novellas unabridged unless the book says otherwise | Level on each book | A1 to B2, by title (see below) | Publisher’s catalogue |
Levels in this table are what the publishers and authors say. We have not tested these books with readers, and we do not rate them. The way to know whether one fits you is a page of the book itself: how to check a German reader in two minutes. How the English series, such as Oxford Bookworms and Penguin Readers, map their levels to CEFR is on How do graded reader levels match CEFR?
Which German graded readers are really A1?
Readers from German publishers that carry an A1 label on the book itself, and two English-language books whose authors put A1 on them:
- Hueber’s Lese-Novelas. Hueber describes the series as “Echte Lektüre auf der Niveaustufe A1”, real reading at A1. One title, Thomas Silvin’s Vera, Heidelberg, has 44 pages.
- Klett’s Leo & Co., Stufe 1. Stufe 1 titles are labelled A1; Die Neue, for example, has 64 pages and comes with audio. Klett’s catalogue lists six Leo & Co. titles at A1.
- Klett’s Easy Readers at A1. Six titles, among them a retelling of Heidi and Kopftuch.
- First German Reader for Beginners opens with an A1 course and moves on to A2, with the English translation on the same page.
- André Klein’s Café in Berlin, the first book of Learn German with Stories. The author labels the start of the series A1/A2, not A1 alone.
Klett’s catalogue has 87 readers at A1 in all, but many of them are for children and teenagers or go with a school coursebook. Junge ELI Lektüren (three A1 titles) are, in Klett’s words, classics of German literature carefully simplified for young learners; Teen Readers (four) are named for teenagers; and some series carry the name of a Klett coursebook, such as Logisch! neu. Check who a reader is written for before you buy it: an adult can read a children’s book, but it may not hold your interest for long.
Which German graded readers are A2?
A2 is where most German readers sit: Klett’s catalogue lists 167 titles at that level, more than at A1 or B1. The English-language story books “for beginners” belong here too.
- Olly Richards’ Short Stories in German for Beginners: A2–B1.
- Lingo Mastery’s German Short Stories for Beginners: A2+.
- Klett’s Easy Readers at A2: 17 titles, among them Erich Kästner’s Emil und die Detektive, Pünktchen und Anton and Als ich ein kleiner Junge war.
- Leo & Co.: six titles at A2 in Klett’s catalogue.
- The second half of First German Reader for Beginners, its A2 course.
Which German graded readers are B1?
At B1 the choice shifts from stories written for learners to shortened real books. Klett’s catalogue lists 101 readers at B1.
- Klett’s Easy Readers at B1: 16 titles, such as Erich Kästner’s Drei Männer im Schnee, Otfried Preußler’s Krabat, Uwe Timm’s Die Entdeckung der Currywurst and Thomas Brussig’s Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee.
- Olly Richards’ Short Stories in German for Intermediate Learners: B1–B2.
- André Klein’s Baumgartner & Momsen detective series: B1/B2, five volumes.
- Leo & Co.: four titles at B1 in Klett’s catalogue.
- Free originals: the shortest German books in our catalogue are B1; see below.
Penguin’s parallel text book of German short stories is not on this list. Like the other books in that series, it prints stories written for native readers next to an English translation, with no level and no controlled vocabulary: see Are Penguin Parallel Text books worth it?
What level is Olly Richards’ Short Stories in German for Beginners?
A2–B1, by the publisher’s own description: “mapped to A2-B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference”. The book has eight stories, its language is controlled to a level that includes the 1,000 most frequent words, and each story has a glossary for the words printed in bold. It went on sale in October 2018 from Teach Yourself, a Hachette imprint. The next book in the series, Short Stories in German for Intermediate Learners, is B1–B2. So “for beginners” means learners who know the basics, not someone on their first day of German.
Lingo Mastery’s German Short Stories for Beginners aims at almost the same reader, A2+, with 20 stories instead of eight. After each story it gives a list of key vocabulary, a summary in German and English, and comprehension questions with answers. Neither publisher gives a word count per story on the pages we checked, so we do not compare length. If you are below A2, start with the A1 readers above instead.
What level are André Klein’s Learn German with Stories books?
The series starts at A1/A2 and climbs, by the author’s own description, to B1/B2 in its last volume. The series page recommends starting with Café in Berlin, a book of 10 short stories, and gives a level for the series as a whole and a difficulty curve, but no CEFR level for each volume. The same site labels André Klein’s detective series, Baumgartner & Momsen, B1/B2, “for intermediate learners starting around the B1/2 level”, in five volumes.
Without a published word list, the labels can only be checked against the books themselves. Read a sample page of the volume you are about to buy rather than counting on its number in the series.
What level are Klett’s Easy Readers and Leo & Co.?
Each title has its own level, printed by Klett. Easy Readers are, in Klett’s words, “Originaltexte – meisterhaft gekürzt”: novels shortened for learners, while short stories and novellas are unabridged unless the book says otherwise. The series page lists 6 titles at A1, 17 at A2, 16 at B1 and 1 at B2. Some of the titles we checked:
| Level | Titles |
|---|---|
| A1 | Heidi, Kopftuch |
| A1–A2 | Das doppelte Lottchen, Lenchens Geheimnis, Ben liebt Anna |
| A2 | Emil und die Detektive, Pünktchen und Anton, Als ich ein kleiner Junge war |
| A2–B1 | Das fliegende Klassenzimmer, Die Wolke, Die Weiße Rose |
| B1 | Drei Männer im Schnee, Krabat, Die Entdeckung der Currywurst, Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee |
| B2 | Der kleine Grenzverkehr |
Leo & Co. is a series of stories set in Germany “für jugendliche und erwachsene Deutschlernende”, teenage and adult learners, at A1, A2 and B1. Its books are numbered by Stufe, and the Stufe 1 titles are A1. Klett’s catalogue lists six Leo & Co. titles at A1, six at A2 and four at B1; some older titles are out of print.
Free German books at B1
The readers above are paid. Our table of free books by level has 192 public-domain books in five languages. Its German books start at B1, and these are the four German B1 books that are open in our catalogue now. They are not graded readers: they were written for German readers, and the level was set by our team. Every title has its own page with the free edition and the time it takes to read.
| Book | Words | Different words | Forms for 95% | Forms for 98% | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Der Struwwelpeter Heinrich Hoffmann · children’s verse | 2,988 | 1,115 | 966 | 1,056 | 15–30 min |
| Das Urteil Franz Kafka · short story | 4,060 | 1,293 | 1,090 | 1,212 | 20–41 min |
| In der Strafkolonie Franz Kafka · short story | 10,321 | 2,338 | 1,822 | 2,132 | 52–103 min |
| Immensee Theodor Storm · novella | 9,744 | 2,463 | 1,976 | 2,269 | 49–97 min |
“Forms for 95%” is how many of the book’s most frequent word forms you need to recognise 95 of every 100 running words in it. Kafka’s Das Urteil needs 1,090 forms for 95% and 1,212 for 98%. Olly Richards’ beginners’ book is controlled to a level that includes the 1,000 most frequent words of German. The numbers look close, but they measure different things: the graded reader keeps to the most common words of the language, while Kafka’s 1,090 forms are whatever words his story uses, and every form of a German verb or adjective counts separately here. A short original is not automatically an easy one, so run the one-page test on it as you would on a graded reader. All German books by level are on German books by level, and the short ones, with old school readers below B1, on Free short stories in German for beginners.
How we counted. Words and different words were counted from the text of each Project Gutenberg edition, in reading order, without the Gutenberg licence and front matter. A word is any run of letters, including umlauts and ß; different words are distinct word forms, ignoring capital letters, so geht and ging count as two. Forms for 95% and 98% are the number of most frequent word forms that together make up that share of the text. Reading time is words divided by 200 and by 100 words per minute; where those speeds come from is on How fast do language learners read? The CEFR levels of our books were set by hand by our team, as explained on the About page. The levels of the graded readers on this page are the publishers'; we did not measure those books.
Free graded texts in German that are not books, such as nachrichtenleicht’s news in plain German and Lingua.com’s levelled texts, are listed on Free graded readers in German.
How to check a German reader in two minutes
Open the free sample or the book itself in the middle, read one full page, and count the words you could not translate. Names don’t count. On a page of about 250 words, five unknown words means you know about 98% of the words, the share that Hu and Nation’s study of reading fiction pointed to (Hu and Nation, 2000); for easy reading in quantity, Nation and Waring set the limit at three or four unknown words a page (Nation and Waring, 2013). If you stop more often than that, go one level down, whatever the cover says. The full test, with the research behind it, is on Is this book right for my level?
The same check works for any language. The Spanish series, from Olly Richards to Lola Lago, are compared the same way on Which Spanish graded readers are really A1, A2 and B1?
Sources
- Hachette. Short Stories in German for Beginners by Olly Richards, Teach Yourself, publisher’s description, checked 31 October 2026. hachette.co.uk
- StoryLearning. Books: German, with levels, checked 31 October 2026. storylearning.com/books
- Lingo Mastery. German Short Stories for Beginners, checked 31 October 2026. lingomastery.com
- LearnOutLive. Series pages for Dino lernt Deutsch (Learn German with Stories) and Baumgartner & Momsen by André Klein, checked 31 October 2026. Dino lernt Deutsch, Baumgartner & Momsen
- May, L. K. and Zubakhin, V. (2019). First German Reader for Beginners: Bilingual for Speakers of English A1 A2, 202 pages, publisher’s description in the Better Read listing, checked 31 October 2026. betterread.com.au
- Hueber. Lese-Novelas: Thomas Silvin, Vera, Heidelberg (2012), eBook, 44 pages, series description in the ebook.de listing, checked 31 October 2026. Hueber’s own shop asked for a login on that day. ebook.de
- Klett Sprachen. Lektüren, Deutsch als Fremdsprache: lists by level with the series filter, A1 (87 titles), A2 (167) and B1 (101), checked 31 October 2026. A1, A2, B1
- Klett Sprachen. Easy Readers (DaF), series page with titles and levels, checked 31 October 2026. klett-sprachen.de
- Klett Sprachen. Leo & Co.: Die Neue, Stufe 1, A1, 64 pages, with series description, checked 31 October 2026. klett-sprachen.de
- Klett Sprachen. Junge ELI Lektüren: Frau Holle und andere Märchen, A1, with series description, checked 31 October 2026. klett-sprachen.de
- Hu, M. and Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1), 403–430. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66973
- Nation, P. and Waring, R. (2013). Extensive Reading and Graded Readers. erfoundation.org
Next: What are graded readers, and which series should you read?