Do You Speak Corona? Social life moved to the digital world for the Germans in Hungary

The social life of Germans in Hungary has completely entered the digital world since mid-March because of the Corona pandemic. The biggest challenge for the Self-government of Germans in Hungary's (Landesselbstverwaltung der Ungarndeutschen, LdU) was to maintain the activities of the more than 50 educational institutions sponsored by the LdU, even in the middle of the Corona crisis.

Schools have switched to digital teaching, lessons were regularly held online and in the many German-speaking kindergartens the time was used to update the pedagogical standards and to supplement the teaching materials, reports Ibolya Hock-Englender, chairwoman of the LdU.

Many of the LdU's nationwide projects, such as the national recitation competition and the national handover of the educational trail, took or will take place online, and a conference is planned for the beginning of September, which will take place online if the situation does not improve.

Summer courses by the Goethe Institute and further training for German teachers and kindergarten teachers will also be held online. Meanwhile, however, many projects are succesfully underway.

Hungary is one of the European countries least affected by the coronavirus pandemic, with only little more than 4,000 infections in total.

During April 2020 FUEN has conducted a survey entitled Do You Speak Corona? on the situation of European minorities during the pandemic. The online questionnaire focused on the availability of information related to COVID-19 in general, healthcare information related to the outbreak, the existence of an emergency hotline operated in minority language and the availability of online education in minority language. The short report on the results is here and you can download the whole report in PDF format by clicking here.

This series of case studies is the continuation of the Do You Speak Corona? project.