Take the Citizenship Test Could You Become a German?
After months in the planning, Germany has finally presented its new citizenship test. Criticism has been widespread, but Interior Minister Schäuble has defended the question catelog. SPIEGEL ONLINE presents 33 questions for your perusal.
It has been in the works for months. But this week, the questions for Germany's new citizenship test were finally released by the Interior Ministry -- all 310 of them. Applicants will be given a test made up of 33 of them, and will have to get 17 correct in order to pass.
The questions are divided up into three broad categories: "Life in a Democracy," "History and Responsibility," and "People and Society." There are also a number of questions pertaining to specific German states. The test is set to go into use on September 1.
If, that is, the critics don't gain the upper hand by then. Immediately upon the release of the test questions, groups representing Germany's Turkish community began blasting it. The group Turkish Community in Germany said it would be giving the test to Germans at public stands as a way of protesting its difficulty. It also criticized the test for asking about attitudes in addition to knowledge.
Green Party politician Volker Beck told the Berliner Zeitung that the test "didn't make naturalization easier, rather it made it more difficult." He also said that it "expects knowledge that Germans only have after they have studied law for a semester." Other German politicians also blasted the new quiz.
German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, though, stuck to his guns on Wednesday saying "we are generous in how we hand out German citizenship, but naturalization does not come without conditions. University education, though, is not one of them," he told the Stuttgarter Zeitung in response to criticism that the test was too difficult. "It's not even as difficult as the exam for a driver's license."
To find out if Schäuble is correct and if you could pass the test to become a German citizen, click on the link in the box on the left.