German reading practice: free texts by level, A1 to C1

The best free German reading practice right now comes from Germany's public broadcasters. Deutschlandfunk, DW, MDR and the tagesschau all publish news in simplified German, every weekday, for free. Put a children's encyclopedia below them and the normal news sites above them, and you have a ladder from A1 to C1.

Every site below was opened and checked in October 2026. Not sure which rung you're on? The free German level test takes a few minutes and tells you where to start.

A1: short texts about things you already know

Klexikon (klexikon.zum.de) calls itself the Wikipedia for children, and it's the largest free children's encyclopedia in German. Short sentences, one idea per paragraph. Pick a topic you could explain in your own language. Your background knowledge does half the reading.

When a Klexikon article feels easy, open the German Wikipedia article on the same topic. Same facts, adult German. It's the cheapest preview of your next level there is.

logo! (logo.de) is ZDF's news for children: short texts and videos every day, explaining the news simply. Kids' news sounds patronising until you try adult news at A1.

A2: Leichte Sprache and Einfache Sprache

This is the German resource most lists miss. Germany has two styles of simplified German written for adults who find standard texts hard, and both happen to be perfect learner material.

Leichte Sprache (easy language) is the strictest: very short sentences, one statement each. Einfache Sprache (plain language) is a step up and closer to normal prose. Both tend to split long compounds so you can see the parts. nachrichtenleicht writes Bundes-Land, not Bundesland.

• nachrichtenleicht (nachrichtenleicht.de) from Deutschlandfunk. Current news in Einfache Sprache, an audio version of each story, and a Wörter-Buch that explains the hard words. If you only bookmark one site from this page, make it this one.
• MDR Nachrichten in Leichter Sprache (mdr.de). Monday to Friday at 13:00, news from Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. Regional, but the sentences are as short as German gets.
• DW Kurz und leicht, DW's daily video news at A2. More listening than reading, but it covers the same stories you'll meet in text.

B1: news written for learners

DW Top-Thema mit Vokabeln (learngerman.dw.com). Short articles on politics, culture and business, with a vocabulary list, exercises, and audio you can read along with. It's the most textbook-like source here, and at B1 that helps.

Easy German on YouTube. Street interviews with German and English subtitles on screen, from what it calls the world's largest channel for learning German. The transcripts are real spoken German, which reads very differently from news.

B2: the slow version, then the real one

DW Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten. The day's news in standard German, read slowly, with the full text alongside. DW pitches it at B2. Read it first, then listen.

tagesschau.de. The ARD's flagship news, free in full. Since June 2024 there's also a tagesschau in Einfacher Sprache broadcast every evening.

The trick that works best at this level: read a story on nachrichtenleicht, then read the same story on tagesschau.de. You already know what happened, so the only thing you're fighting is the language.

C1: whatever you'd read in your own language

Public broadcasters like tagesschau.de and deutschlandfunk.de are free in full. Most commercial papers mix free articles with paid ones.

For books, Project Gutenberg has a German section with Kafka's Die Verwandlung, Fontane's Effi Briest and the Grimm fairy tales in the original. Lovely, and older German than you're used to.

The part these lists skip: words you don't know

German has two habits that make looking words up harder than in most languages.

Compounds. Krankenversicherungskarte won't be in a small dictionary. Split it from the right: Karte is the thing, and everything before it describes the card.

Separable verbs. In Ich fange morgen an, the verb is anfangen, but its two halves sit at opposite ends of the sentence. Look up fange alone and you'll get half the meaning. When a sentence ends in a lonely an, auf, mit or zurück, glue it back onto the verb.

Beyond that, you have three ways to deal with unknown words, in order of friction. A dictionary tab (dict.cc or LEO) next to the text. A pop-up dictionary that shows the meaning and then forgets it. Or a reader that keeps the word with its sentence and brings it back before you forget it.

Mossglen is the third one (full disclosure: I build it). It's a free Chrome extension. On any site above, it turns the page into a clean reading view; tap a word and it's saved with its sentence. It works on Easy German's videos too, turning the captions into a transcript you can tap.

How much should you read?

One short article a day is a realistic target. Choose texts where you know almost every word: around 98% is the number that matters, and you don't need to look up every word to keep going.

One site, daily, beats ten bookmarks. The same method works in any language: how to learn a language by reading.