- WIRKENDES WORT provides a general survey of the entire spectrum of the subject of "German language and literature in reseearch and teaching". For teachers of German, the journal is an institution offering constant further training, which keeps them up to date on developments in research and didactics. For students of German, linguists and literary scholars, WIRKENDES WORT is a forum in which they can present their specific problems and at the same time integrate the results of their research into the global scale of the subject. Regular reviews and research reports offer some transparency with regard to the impenetrable jungle of new publications and assess them against a specialist academic and didactic background.