"Abschied von seiner ungetreuen Liebsten"

A Poem by Johann Christian Günther

Wie gedacht,
Vor geliebt, jetzt ausgelacht.
Gestern in den Schoß gerissen,
Heute von der Brust geschmissen,
Morgen in die Gruft gebracht.
Wie gedacht,
Vor geliebt, jetzt ausgelacht.

For this particular poem by Günther (1695 - 1723), I chose the first stanza only. This first stanza contains many verbs in the past-perfect form, and the verbs used are level-appropriate for third semester students. (denken, lachen, bringen, etc.) They also have simple roots with prefixes that make the meanings more complex.

In addition to discussing the grammar one can, in the third semester, discuss the content by incorporating discussion questions. One may choose to put the discussion questions on a handout for the students to work on in groups. Then, once the students have talked about the questions and possible answers, the teacher can then re-ask some of the questions and prompt new ones for further class discussion. Or, the teacher can simply pose discussion questions to get a discussion going.

Lesson Plan

Each student is given a copy of the poem.

The lesson begins with students finding (underlining or highlighting) the verbs.

The class then discusses the meanings of the verbs and the forms they are in, as well as other words that need clarification. (One could speed this up by glossing certain words in advance by writing them in the margins before making copies of the poem.)

Then, the instructor reads the poem out loud to demonstrate the correct way to pronounce the words while emphasizing certain lines, words, or phrases. Next, the students should read the poem to each other in pairs to practice pronunciation and begin learning how to read poems.

It is then helpful to get a general response from the students to see how they respond to the poem. A good way to start would be using something fairly simple like, "Ist dieses Gedicht glücklich oder traurig?" The discussion can then continue with other similar questions like:

Spricht ein Mann oder eine Frau in diesem Gedicht?
Ist diese Person jung oder alt?
Wer kann lieben? Alte Leute? Junge Leute? Frauen?
Männer?
Warum ist das passiert? Warum machen Menschen solche Sachen? (z.B. auslachen, in den Schoß reißen, von der Brust schmeißen?) Und welche von diesen Dingen sind positiv? Was ist hier negativ? Ist auslachen positiv? u.s.w.)

Another thing to point out with the first stanza of this poem is time. Many of the words in this poem are prepositions or adverbs of time. And since the lesson deals with time and past tense, this is an appropriate topic to approach. The words that have to do with time are:

vor
jetzt
Gestern
Heute
Morgen

An additional option would be to then ask the students:
"If these time-related words were taken out or mixed around, how would this change the meaning of the poem?"

The instructor could do this by putting a copy of the poem on an overhead but having the time-related words replaced with blanks.
The poem could be then read without the time-related words, or with those words mixed around to see how this affects the meaning of the poem.

One could then end the lesson by having the students write a very short poem about something they've experienced in the past, getting them to practice the past perfect.

To do this, the teacher could provide the students with a handout to aid in brainstorming words to use in a poem and/or supply the students with a poem outline.
It should be pointed out that regular and irregular verbs in the past perfect mostly end with a "t," strong verbs end with "en," and the vowel change for many strong verbs in the past perfect is to an "a," for example, sprechen > sprach, and sehen > sah. This will show students how relatively easy it is to make something rhyme.