Anrede und Distanz: die Praktikumsbewerbung an eine Leipziger Familienfirma
Jara, 17, is applying for a two-week Praktikum at Brüggemann Metallbau, a 75-person family firm in Leipzig founded in 1952. Her only contact has been Sabine Krüger, who handles HR and replied within the hour: „Hallo Jara, danke für deine Mail. Prinzipiell gern – schick uns bitte deine Unterlagen. LG Sabine“. Jara's draft now opens: „Sehr geehrte Sabine, ich bin 17 Jahre alt und will mich um ein Praktikum bewerben.“ She has to send it tonight. The firm's website never uses du and still says „Bewerbungen bitte an Frau Krüger“. A friend who did a Praktikum there last year insists everyone was on du terms, including the Geschäftsführer, Herr Brüggemann. Jara wants a decision she can defend to her teacher.
1. Which salutation and which pronoun should Jara use in this email? Address the friend's report directly and explain what is at stake.
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Decision: „Sehr geehrte Frau Krüger,“ with Sie throughout.
- German business correspondence is asymmetric. The more senior party can offer du; the applicant cannot take it. Krüger's „Hallo“ and „LG“ mark a relaxed house style, not an invitation - both are common even in houses that keep Sie.
- The friend's report describes internal talk between colleagues. Jara is not yet an employee; an outsider's first contact is judged against the published norm, and the website is formal.
- „Sehr geehrte Sabine“ is the one option that is never correct: it bolts a formal formula onto a first name. „Hallo Frau Krüger“ is too casual for a first approach; „Liebe Frau Krüger“ is defensible where contact is already warm but riskier here.
- The cost of guessing wrong is asymmetric: an over-formal opening reads as careful, a presuming one reads as unerzogen.
- If Krüger later writes „du kannst mich gern duzen“, Jara switches in her next message - and only there.
2. Rewrite Jara's opening sentence so that it fits the register and the purpose of an application, and justify each change.
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Original: „ich bin 17 Jahre alt und will mich um ein Praktikum bewerben.“ Rewrite: „ich möchte mich um einen zweiwöchigen Praktikumsplatz in Ihrer Fertigung bewerben.“
- „will“ → „möchte“. „Ich will“ in a first approach sounds like a demand; „möchte“ is the conventional polite marker of intention and costs nothing in directness.
- Age deleted. Her age is in the Lebenslauf. Leading with it invites the reader to assess her as young before knowing why she is writing.
- Concrete object added. „bewerben“ is reflexive and takes um + accusative: „ich bewerbe mich um einen Praktikumsplatz“. The bare „ein Praktikum“ is vague; the duration and department show she has read about the firm.
- „Ihrer“ capitalised as the polite possessive.
- Layout: in a German letter the first line after the salutation begins lower case - „Sehr geehrte Frau Krüger,“ then a new line, then „ich möchte …“.
- A sentence on why metalwork and why this firm would earn more marks than her birth year.
3. Jara also wants to email Herr Brüggemann, the Geschäftsführer, who has never written to her. What changes, and what must stay the same?
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- Changes: the relationship is purely formal and one step higher, so Sie is mandatory and „Sehr geehrter Herr Brüggemann,“ is the only realistic opening. The content must also change: he does not know who she is, so the first line has to situate her („Frau Krüger hat mir geraten, mich direkt an Sie zu wenden“).
- Stays the same: the closing formula („Mit freundlichen Grüßen“), the consistent Sie, and the lower-case first line.
- Do not copy the du from the floor. Even if the factory is a du-Haus, Jara has no evidence that the Geschäftsführer uses du with applicants, and she would be spending the friend's anecdote as if it were a fact about him.
- Consistency rule: if she has already offered du to Krüger in one document, she cannot offer Sie to Brüggemann in the same document and expect the letters to be read as a set. Within any single letter, one pronoun, consistently.
- Der Lebenslauf takes no Anrede at all - a frequent student error. The salutation belongs to the Anschreiben only.