hello :) just to clarify 1 = bad and 10 = good in termsof grades in Germany? It's confusing as in some other countries it's reversed!
Oh no sadly it’s a little bit more complicated. The point system is only used in the last two grades (=Oberstufe) because all those points will be added and make up a part (i think it’s a third everywhere, but I’m not sure) of your final grades.
Im gonna explain in detail how German grades work, so TLDR: The points go from 0 (bad) - 15 (good) and Mailin has the equivalent of a B- in the American system.
Usually in Germany we use grades from 1 to 6, where 1 is good and 6 is the worst. Similar to the American system where they use A to F, just with one grade more.
So now is where the complication begins. In some states like Bavaria those are usually the only grades. You get a 1 or a 2 no inbetween. In other states there’s usually steps between grades. And those can very well be different in every school you go to. I think the most common system nowadays is to use decimals. So can get a 1,1 or a 3,5 and that just means you’re between the two grades. This is also how your average in the end is written. So your points will at one point be translated back into this system!
The other common system of steps between grades is with quarter steps. These are indicated with a + or a - or with both grades at once. So for example a 2+ (2 plus) is a 1,75. A 2- (2 minus) is a 2,25. A 2-3 (2 to 3 or in German 2 bis 3) is a 2,5. And this system is actually used in the point system as well.
So how does the point system work exactly? So the points range from 15 to 0. To remember how they’re translate you begin at 15. This is the best one so it’s a 1+ (0,75). And then you go down with the quarter steps of every grade. BUT there are no half steps, so no 2-3 (2,5) or similar grades. And the last grade 6 has no quarter steps, because it just means you really did fail. (It’s what you get when you hand in an empty paper) So the points translate like this:
15 points = 1+ (0,75)
14 points = 1
13 points = 1- (1,25)
12 points = 2+ (1,75)
11 points = 2
10 points = 2- (2,25)
9 points = 3+ (2,75)
8 points = 3
7 points = 3- (3,25)
6 points = 4+ (3,75)
5 points = 4
Very important! Below this you fail. Where I did my abitur you could only have 5 grades below this point in the Oberstufe, or else you will not be allowed to do your Abitur.
4 points = 4- (4,25)
3 points = 5+ (4,75)
2 points = 5
1 point = 5- (5,25)
0 point = 6
Last bit about grades in Germay, then I’ll stop: I know there’s systems like for example in France or in some universities where the top grades are never given to anyone and a B+ would basically be like an A. That’s not the case here, the 15 is very rare in courses like History or German, where it’s the teachers’ judgement but it is used and it commonly happens in Maths, Physics or similar courses.
Hope this helped and didn’t confuse you more!! Also feel free to correct me if any of this doesn’t apply to Berlin!
...Despite working exclusively in abstraction, Nay’s distinctive Expressionistic use of color and textile-like patterning show the influence of representational painters like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the Henri Matisse.
In 1931 Nay was granted a nine-month scholarship for Villa Massimo in Rome, where he developed his own style, initially marked by abstract surrealist compositions and paintings of ornamental mythical animals. His trips to the Baltic Sea and his sojourns in Norway, where he met Munch, and his visits to the Lofoten island, defined the subjects of his artistic world. In 1937 he was affected by the exhibition ban imposed by the national-socialists. Two of his landscapes were shown in the exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). He was enlisted in 1940, and spent most of his time as a cartographer in France, where the amateur sculptor Pierre Térouanne put his studio at Nay's disposal, so that he could carry on working. Ernst Jünger visited him and bought his painting Elk's Head.
After 1945, Nay worked on various sets of works, ranging from the mythic-abstract Paintings of Hecate, to the abstract Scheibenbilder, to the ornamental reductionism of his later work. Nay took advantage of the international vogue for abstract painting as the world's aesthetic language. In 1950 his first retrospective exhibition was held in Hanover.
Helle Akzente, 1956, oil on canvas
... The palette in Nay's "Scheibenbilder" (Disc Picture) ranges from almost white to almost black hues and also reveals Nay's closeness to music, as many of his titles suggest.
Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart. Rot konstruiert 1924
oil on canvas
160.0 x 120.0 cm
National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)
... These words and his final pronouncement that ‘form no longer has any contact with the appearance of Nature’, were a verbal testimony to what had been apparent in art all over Europe for some time, in the abstracted form of De Stijl artists and architects, in Malevich’s mystical directions in the Black Square, and in the design activities of the Bauhaus...
