Tobias Kube was awarded for being the most promising debater new on the German language deating circuit at the German Language Debating Championship in Vienna in June this year. Deutsche Debattiergesellschaft, the alumni debating society of Germany, grants this award every year to one of the up-and-coming debaters. Read here the interview of a first year who will soon be debating with and against old stagers at the Masters’ Cup in Eisenach. Read the complete interview in German.

 

Wanna know what Lenny Kravitz, a piggy bank and Jesus all have to do with DDG, the German debating alumni association? Well... read the German version of this! The Deutsche Debattiergesellschaft (DDG) – the German association of alumni debaters – provides a network for alumni debaters as well as it promotes student debating in German speaking regions. Moreover, DDG is co-editor of our debating magazine Achte Minute. DDG’s general assembly of 2011 elected their executive board: Stefan Hübner is now president of the alumni association supported by Marietta Gädeke, Oliver Hörtensteiner, Nicolas Eberle and Bastian Laubner. ...

The general assembly of Deutsche Debattiergesellschaft (DDG), the German alumni debating association, have elected a new executive board: President is now Stefan Hübner, his vice-presidents are Marietta Gädeke, Nicolas Eberle, Bastian Laubner and Oliver Hörtensteiner. ...

Mixing cocktails, strolling through Berlin, the German women football team losing to Japan, prospective Worlds and Euros convenors beating each other in distributing their giveaways ... All that and much more is the Berlin IV. Find here the motions, the break to (semi-)finals and the tab! And read the German version of this article to learn more about how Manuel Adams saw the Berlin IV or what it is called these days. The motions: [caption id="attachment_10365" align="alignright" width="226" caption="Convenor Dessislava Kirova talking to a participant of the Berlin IV.  (Picture: Manuel Adams)"][/caption] 1. Vorrunde: This house would financially incentivise parents to have two ...

The break to finals of the ZEIT DEBATTE Jena is online! Please read the German version of this article to learn who made it to final. vro / apf ...

The Break of the ZEIT DEBATTE Jena is online! Please read the German version of this article to learn who made it to semis. apf / vro ...

Paris is very, very beautiful. Plus, it is the political, economic and social center of the French nation. It is de facto impossible to get the full impression in just one weekend. But the convenors of Louisa Leila Zhang’s team helped us get a good first glimpse on the first weekend of April. The about 150 participants of the Paris IV were offered hospitality and French cuisine, impressive technology and the art of partying plus a city tour – and all that in just under 45 hours. The debaters – from the Wordls finalist John Ashbourne from the London School ...

On his blog, Manos Moschopoulos compiled unofficial tabs for ESL and EFL respectively for the World Universities Debating Championships (WUDC or Worlds). He did so based on data provided by Leela Koenig, judge at Botswana Worlds, and the competition's language committee. So far, official ESL and EFL tabs have not yet been published by the adjudication team of CA Logandran Balavijendran. According to Manos’ compilation, a correction of the Top Five EFL Speakers has to be noted: “Simon Belak (Ljubljana C) and Andreas Lazar (Stuttgart A) are joint top EFL speakers (initially, they were announced as 2nd and 1st respectively),” Manos ...

This article is not yet available in English. Please read the German version to learn more about the Berlin Invitational and Berlin Punk, both hosted this weekend by the Berlin Debating Union.

The full tab of the World Universities Debating Championships 2011 has been made available online already! The CA team put it on the homepage of Botswana Worlds. Naturally, Achte Minute does have a focus on the results of  VDCH teams and speakers. Hence, to lighten the burden for you, our loyal readers, we compiled their results. ...

The term "Worlds" is used in its plural form because numerous winners have been awarded at Gaborone, Botswana last night. Foremost, the three best teams have to be mentioned who prevailed over the course of nine prelims. It is three best teams as there are three categories: "Open Break", "English as a Second Language" (ESL) and "English as a Foreign Language" (EFL). And the winners are ... Monash A from Australia, Haifa A from Israel and Tokyo B from Japan. There were about 300 teams from all over the globe competing for the title, 32 of which made it to ...

Team Stuttgart A made it to ESL semis at World Universities Debating Championships in Botsuana. Congratulations to Michael Saliba and Andreas Lazar. Please read more on this in the German version of this article! apf / glx ...

One quarter of the teams of the ESL break are from Germany! That would make one German team in each room, one could think. But in final rounds, the tab is folded. That means that for instance room one assembles teams ranking on 1, 7, 8 and 16. Thanks to this folding, room three of the ESL qurter finals will see two German teams: Stuttgart A (Andreas Lazar and Michael Saliba) and Berlin B (Patrick Ehmann and Bastian Laubner). Other German teams in the quarters are Berlin B (Florian Umscheid and Dessislava Kirova) and Gutenberg A (Marcus Ewald and Marietta ...

That sure is a good start into the new year for VDCH country: Four German teams broke to ESL quarter finals of the World Universities Debating Championships (WUDC or Worlds) in Gaborone. Here are the lucky ones: Stuttgart A, Michael Saliba, Andreas Lazar, 15 points Berlin B, Dessislava Kirova, Florian Umscheid, 14 points Gutenberg A (Mainz), Marcus Ewald, Marietta Gädeke, 14 points Berlin A, Bastian Laubner, Patrick Ehmann, 13 points Jens Henning Fischer and Isabelle Loewe broke as judges. The complete break was compiled by Stephen M. Llano on his Blog. The draws for the main break are available on Colm Flynn's  World Debating Website. Congratulations to ...

Breaking news from Botswana: Results of our VDCH teams after round 6 leaked from Gabs and we have it all here for our loyal readers. Colm Flynn provided photographs of the tab on his World Debating Website. So how are our German and Austrian teams doing in Gaborone? ...

Six preliminary rounds are over, night has fallen over Botswana. Tomorrow will bring three more pre-rounds at Worlds 2011. These are going to be closed rounds – no feedback and no info on the ranking will leak from the judges. Socials tonight feature a “culture night”. No more complaints about waiting and queuing are to be heard in Gaborone, but speculations on the ranking of teams and institutions. The teams of Debattierclub Stuttgart feel fine with their performance, Andreas C. Lazar reported this morning: “Gaborone, 32 degrees Celsius. Both Michael [Saliba] and I (Stuttgart A) as well as Jana [Gilke] and ...

Georg Sommerfeld and Johannes Häger won for the Berlin Debating Union the Santa Claus Tournament in Münster.

Not yet available in English. Please check back later.

The Berlin Debating Union (BDU) unite debating novices as well as old stagers with their January competitions: On 7 January 2011, they host an invitational which has to be understood literally – speakers get an invitation. With four prelims and a final all taking place on Friday, those old stagers get a good chance to compete with each other. This tournament will be held in German, the format will be BPS, chief adjudicators are Torsten Rössing (Klartext Halle) and Bastian Laubner (BDU). On the following two days, 8 and 9 January, Berlin will be stage to BDU’s Punk tournament. While everybody ...

Die Presse berichtet, die Clubs erzählen. Hier schon ein paar Stimmen zu den VDCH-Regionalmeisterschaften 2010. "Der Westen", das Internetportal der WAZ-Mediengruppe, berichtet über die Westdeutsche Meisterschaft (WDM) und das Debattieren an sich. Der Journalist Thomas Mader hat sich bei der WDM eine Vorrunde angeschaut. In dem Artikel "Reden ist Gold bei der Debattiermeisterschaft" schreibt er: "Das sind merkwürdige Studenten, hier an der Dortmunder Uni: Sie siezen sich und sagen Sachen wie: 'Aber mein Herr ... Sie haben doch gerade ausgeführt … Ist es nicht so … da fehlen mir die Worte …' Man achte auf ihre rechte Hand, wie sie in bester ...