BW Abitur History Bilingual FR LF common mistakes
BW Abitur History Bilingual FR LF · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Analysing a written source by retelling its content in order (the author says X, then Y, then Z) without first fixing genre, author, occasion, addressee and intention, so the analysis becomes a summary and the 'Analyse' marks are lost even though the content is correct.
Candidates are trained in comprehension tasks and transfer the 'read and report' habit; under time pressure summarising feels productive, and the difference between Inhaltsangabe and Quellenanalyse is never practised with a timer. Bilingual candidates in particular may translate the text mentally first and then report what they understood.
What to do instead
Use a fixed four-step opener before writing a single content sentence: (1) Textsortenbestimmung / genre (Rede, Artikel, Tagebuch, Dekret, Brief), (2) Verfasser und Adressat mit Standort im Konflikt, (3) Anlass und Datum, (4) Intention/These in one sentence. Then organise the body by argumentative function (Aufbau der Argumentation, rhetorische Mittel, Selbst- und Fremdbild), not by line order, and quote 3–5 short key phrases per paragraph. Practise on three source types: a 1919 Versailles commentary, a 1935 Nuremberg Law circular, and a 1950 Schuman Plan press reaction.
Treating the Franco-German relationship as a single linear 'reconciliation story' (Erbfeindschaft to Freundschaft, 1963 Elysée Treaty, done) without naming the mechanisms, the asymmetric motives, or the conflicts that interrupted it.
Textbooks and commemorative rhetoric compress the relationship into a success narrative; candidates memorise the treaty date and the phrase 'Motor Europas' and stop there, because the exam question often sounds like it invites celebration rather than analysis.
What to do instead
Build a table with three columns: phase, mechanism, conflict. Phases: 1945–50 occupation and Saar question; 1950–58 Schuman/Montanunion and the EDC failure (1954); 1958–63 de Gaulle–Adenauer and the Elysée Treaty with its contested preamble; 1963–89 routine cooperation plus Ostpolitik frictions; 1989–90 German unity and French worries about the DM and 'Gleichgewicht'; post-1990 engine role in Maastricht, euro, and later divergence on enlargement and defence. For each row, name the concrete instrument (youth office DFJW 1963, joint ministerial councils, common textbook Histoire/Geschichte 2006) and one moment of tension.
Answering an 'evaluiere/beurteile' or 'erörtere' prompt by listing arguments for and against in two unconnected blocks, with no criterion, no weighting, and no explicit judgement at the end.
The 'Sandwich' pattern (pro, contra, 'therefore it was both') is taught as a safe template; candidates fear that committing to a judgement will cost marks if the examiner disagrees, so they hedge. The result reads as a list, not a judgement.
What to do instead
State the criterion before the arguments: e.g. 'gemessen an den Kriterien Legitimität, Wirksamkeit und Langzeitfolgen'. Then weigh: which argument carries more weight and why (evidence, scale, duration, contemporary alternatives). Close with a clear, qualified verdict in one or two sentences plus the limits of that verdict. Practise converting 'both sides' sentences into 'X überwiegt, weil … allerdings nur unter der Bedingung …'.
Using period vocabulary as neutral description - writing 'Machtergreifung', 'Reichskristallnacht', 'Endlösung', 'Befreiung' for 1945, or 'Vertreibung' without qualification - instead of marking such terms as contemporary propaganda or perpetrator language.
These words sit in source texts and in older study materials; candidates copy them because they seem to be the standard terms, and the distinction between Quellensprache and Analysesprache is rarely made explicit in revision.
What to do instead
Adopt a naming policy: use 'Machtergreifung' only in quotation marks or as 'sogenannte Machtergreifung', and prefer 'nationalsozialistische Machtübernahme'; write 'Novemberpogrome 1938' not 'Reichskristallnacht'; write 'systematischer Massenmord an den europäischen Juden' and mark 'Endlösung' as the perpetrators' euphemism. When quoting a source, add 'so der Verfasser' to signal distance. Keep a one-page glossary of terms to avoid and their replacements.
Handling a statistical source by quoting single figures (e.g. 'unemployment rose to 6 million in 1932') without reading the axis, base year, units, index construction, or the gap between absolute and relative change, and without asking who compiled the data and why.
Numbers feel objective, so candidates skip the source criticism they apply to texts; index series (1913 = 100), changing borders, and per-capita versus absolute figures are not practised, and misreading a scale in the exam is invisible once the figure is written down.
What to do instead
Run a checklist before interpreting: Titel und Ersteller (statistisches Reichsamt, Gewerkschaft, Parteiorgan), Erhebungsmethode, Bezugsgröße (absolute Zahl, Index, Prozent), Basisjahr, Gebietsstand, Lücken und Brüche in der Reihe. Then describe trend in three moves: Ausgangsniveau, Richtung und Tempo, Wendepunkt. Only then explain. Practise with a real series such as German industrial production 1928–1932 or French population/agricultural employment 1850–1913, and state explicitly what the figure cannot show (e.g. hidden unemployment, short-time work).
Writing the interwar period as a straight line from Versailles to Hitler ('Versailles caused the Third Reich'), collapsing contingency and ignoring the alternatives, the stabilisation phase 1924–29, and the choices of elites after 1930.
Hindsight makes the outcome look inevitable, and a causal chain is easier to remember than a field of competing factors; exam questions on 'Kontinuität und Wandel' invite exactly this shortcut.
What to do instead
Separate three levels: structural burdens (reparations, inflation, dependence on US loans), conjunctural shocks (1929, Brüning's deflation), and decisions (presidential cabinets, Article 48, elite bargains of January 1933). For each, name a counterfactual or an alternative that existed at the time. Anchor with dates: Ruhr occupation 1923, Dawes Plan 1924, Locarno 1925, Young Plan 1929, unemployment 1932, appointment 30 January 1933. Use the phrase 'begünstigte, aber determinierte nicht' and back it with evidence.
Narrating the Cold War as a bilateral US–Soviet story in which Germany and France appear only as scenery, so questions on the Berlin Blockade, the Hallstein Doctrine, or the stationing of missiles are answered without the German and French decision-making context.
Much revision material is written from a superpower perspective; candidates learn the 'big' chronology (Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, Warsaw Pact) and then cannot connect it to the Bonn Republic's sovereignty claims or French withdrawal from NATO's integrated command in 1966.
What to do instead
For every Cold War turning point, add a German and a French line: 1948–49 Blockade and Luftbrücke; 1955 sovereignty and NATO accession; 1958–61 Berlin ultimatum and the Wall; 1966 French withdrawal from integrated command; 1970s Ostpolitik and the Four Power Agreement on Berlin 1971; 1979 NATO double-track decision and its domestic contestation; 1987 INF Treaty. Practise writing a three-column timeline and then one paragraph explaining how the German and French positions interacted.
Answering questions on 1989–91 and the post-1990 order with a vague 'the Cold War ended and Europe united' instead of distinguishing the revolutions of 1989, the Two Plus Four negotiations, the constitutional Article 23 versus Article 146 question, and the contested consequences (Maastricht, enlargement, Yugoslavia).
The events are recent, emotionally positive, and often learned through commemorative shorthand; candidates lack the institutional detail and are unsure where the exam's analytical edge lies.
What to do instead
Learn a compact scaffold: 1989 revolutions and the Monday demonstrations; 9 November 1989; Ten-Point Programme 28 November; Two Plus Four 1990 and the 2+4 Treaty; Article 23 route and the Volkskammer decision; 3 October 1990; Maastricht 1992 and the euro; recognition of Croatia and Slovenia 1991/92 and the wars of Yugoslav succession; NATO and EU enlargement rounds. For each, name one controversy (e.g. whether recognition of Croatia accelerated the war, or whether Maastricht's convergence criteria constrained German fiscal policy).
Describing a visual source (a caricature, poster, or photograph) by inventory - 'I see a man, a top hat, a map' - without decoding symbols, caption, date, and the intended audience, and without linking the image's argument to the historical situation.
Candidates lack a vocabulary for visual rhetoric and fear over-interpreting; they therefore stay on the safe level of description. Bilingual candidates may also miss wordplay in a French or German caption, which carries much of the meaning.
What to do instead
Use a three-layer method: (1) Beschreibung of composition, figures, size relations, text and signature; (2) Entschlüsselung of symbols and stereotypes (top hat and frock coat for capital, the 'Michel' or 'Germania' figure, map shapes and border distortions), including any caption pun; (3) Einordnung in date, occasion, publisher and intended effect. Always state what the image wants the viewer to believe and which counter-evidence it omits. Practise with a 1919 French or German cartoon on the Treaty of Versailles and a 1950s poster on European unity.
Losing marks on chronology and periodisation by using decades loosely ('in the 1800s', 'around the turn of the century') and by dating events to the wrong year - e.g. placing the Ems Dispatch in 1870, the founding of the German Empire in 1871, the February and October Revolutions in the same month, or the Wannsee Conference in 1942 correctly but the invasion of Poland in 1939 as 'the start of the war' without the earlier annexations.
Revision by theme rather than by timeline leaves dates floating; candidates avoid committing to a year to reduce risk, which reads as vagueness and costs precision marks in chronology and continuity questions.
What to do instead
Build a single master timeline of 60–80 anchor dates across the whole course and test yourself weekly by writing the year from memory, then checking. For periodisation questions, practise justifying a start and end date with two pieces of evidence and one acknowledged alternative (e.g. 1914 versus 1917 as the caesura of the First World War; 1945 as zero hour versus continuity thesis). Never write 'around' when a year is known.