During the fall 2013 semester, Professor Matthaeus Ochmann’s German class was assigned a project to keep a personal vocabulary development journal. As part of the assignment, junior Christie Pearce composed a list of 50 German words that are interchangeable in English and do not have an English equivalent, such as “diesel” and “kindergarten.” Intrigued, the class used her list for a quiz during an on-campus German cultural event.
Ochmann, a visiting instructor from Germany, shared the event’s success with his father. This reminded his father, a graphic designer, of his time working affiliated with Scheufelen, a German printing company that creates an “art calendar” every year. He mentioned the word list to Scheufelen, and coincidentally their 2014 calendar features graphic representations of the German words and explanations of their uses in both English and German.
The calendar, which recently won a design award, was created using various printing methods and different types of thick, high quality paper to showcase the company’s work. With only 3500 copies printed, the calendar is in limited supply and costs approximately $135 to purchase.
Because of the correlation between the calendar idea and Christie’s list, Scheufelen sent the class two of the calendars as gifts. Christie received one, and the other was given to Oglethorpe’s Weltner Library to display.