In the 25 years after the SfOS was set up in Berlin, 480 people studied Chinese there. Most were law students, along with some postal and bank employees, diplomats, engineers, merchants and others. The SfOS functioned as a practically oriented language training school, not as a center of an independent branch of learning, and it did not offer courses on Chinese culture or philosophy.
柏林的東方語言研究所成立之後，二十五年間，共有四百八十人在這裡學過中文，學生主要是法律系的大學生，也有部份為郵政、銀行職員，外交官、工程師、商人等，功能上屬語言訓練學校，以實用為目的，並非一門獨立的學科，所以沒有中國文化與哲學相關課程。