Learn German On Kindle With Free Books

Last year I wrote a post about how to use your Kindle to learn a foreign language. Since then I have been using the Kindle myself quite a lot, both to learn various languages and create my own experimental ebooks for learning German. Today, I’d like to show you how you can get tons of free German books for your Kindle!

Reading Is A Time-Tested Method For Learning

While there are many high quality multimedia courses and videos available these days, designed to help you learn German, there is nothing as powerful as letting worlds come alive in your mind by reading in the language you wish to learn. The beauty of this no-frills but highly effective approach is that after overcoming the initial hurdle of seeing foreign garble, the “foreign” aspect tends to fade into the background and – as a reviewer of one of my Kindle detective stories for German learners once put it - you forget you were “supposed to be learning”.

1. Free Kindle books to learn German: Classics

Ever wanted to read Nietzsche, Kafka, or Heinrich Heine in the German original? Well…now you can, and you don’t even have to pay a dime!

To find these free classics, open this link (it leads you to the “free classics” section of the German Amazon store) or go directly to the free German Kindle classics or free short German Kindle classics section.

 

2. Free Kindle Books To Learn German: Modern Bestsellers

Literary classics aren’t your thing? No problem, there are tons of free contemporary titles available for free every day:

To find these free Kindle offers, click here!

You will be redirected to the Amazon Kindle bestseller list containing both paid titles (middle column, Top 100) and free titles in the right column, Top 100 gratis:

By clicking on the categories on the far left side, you can browse through every possible sub-genre from financial guide books to zombie slayer and romance ebooks, all in German, all for free!

~

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR NON-GERMAN CUSTOMERS: After selecting one of the free books and opening its detail page on Amazon.de, you might have to switch back to your default Kindle store (e.g. Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk)

Here’s how you do that:

1. After clicking on a book’s title, look at the URL (the address in your browser window) of the book’s page you’re on:

this is the page of Goethe’s Faust: as you can see the .de in your browser’s address bar indicates that we’re on the German Amazon.

To change that, simply mark or highlight the DE part of the address as shown in the screenshot..

… replace it with COM and hit Enter on your keyboard.

You’ll be redirected to the book’s page on the Amazon.com store and should be able to download it without problems! The same process works by replacing the DE with CO.UK , FR, ES, IT, etc. depending on where you have your primary Amazon account.

P.S.: If you need a German dictionary to help with translating difficult words, read the instructions I posted here.

Happy Reading & Viel Spaß!

~

img:  Some rights reserved by needoptic / flickr

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.