Hennings Haus
Hennings Haus is a German-language Channel 4 schools TV series from the 2000s, covering German Language for primary and secondary school pupils.
In Germany, an eccentric but friendly man befriends a group of children and sets them a task or quest each week. The tasks send them exploring their town or trying out activities, all while using simple German language with repetition of basic vocabulary such as numbers and days of the week.
Henning the central character first encounters the children when he falls off his unicycle and needs help finding his house (Hennings haus), which turns out (at the end of the first episode and so a spoiler!) to be a fancy converted railway carriage. He entertains the children by playing the saxophone.
The programmes were made in the town of Beverstedt
with a group of local children going to school and looking round the town. In episode 3 Henning travels to the bigger, nearby town of Bremen and meets a different group of children there.
The series was part of a sequence of beginners' language TV programmes made by the Scottish company Lomond Productions for Channel 4, alongside Chez Mimi in French and La Tienda de Luis in Spanish.
Titles & Theme Music
Children sing (in German) come, come, come with us, we're going now to Henning, going to Henning's house alongside abstract animations of Henning riding his unicycle around a blue background, with the words of the song shown on screen.
Komm, komm, komm mit uns,
Wir gehen jetzt zu Henning,
Gehen zu Hennings Haus. Hennings Haus!
Episode List
| # | Title | Broadcast |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Wie heißt du? | 27 Feb 2001 |
| 2. | Auf die Platze, fertig, los! | 6 Mar 2001 |
| 3. | Der falsche Rucksack | 13 Mar 2001 |
| 4. | So eim Larm | 20 Mar 2001 |
| 5. | Hennings Geburtstag | 27 Mar 2001 |
Broadcasts
| Year | Term | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Channel | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000-01 | Spring 2001 | Tuesday, 10:15am | Channel 4 | |||||
| 2001-02 | Summer 2002 | Tuesday, 10:00am | Channel 4 | |||||
| 2002-03 | Summer 2003 | Tuesday, 9:45am | Channel 4 | |||||
| 2003-04 | Spring 2004 | Wednesday, 5:00am | Channel 4 | |||||
| 2004-05 | - | |||||||
| 2005-06 | Summer 2006 | Tuesday, 4:30am+ | Channel 4 | 23rd May | ||||
| 2006-07 | - | |||||||
| 2007-08 | Spring & Summer 2008 | Tuesday, 4:00am+ | Channel 4 | 29th January & 6th May | ||||
| 2008-09 | Spring 2009 | Wednesday, 4:15am+ | Channel 4 | 4th February | ||||
The series was also broadcast on Teachers' TV in the UK.
Episodes 1-4 were broadcast in an hour-long block several times between 24th November and 11th December 2005. Later isolated episodes, most often episode 1, were broadcast during 2006, and its final Teachers' TV appearance was a run of episodes 1 & 2 on 2nd & 3rd August 2007.
Episode 5 was never broadcast by Teachers' TV, but all 5 episodes were streamed on the Teachers' TV website.
Credits
| Starring | Uli Ames as Henning |
| Episodes 1-2 & 4-5 with | Roman Arzaroli Thayalleni Nadarajah |
| Episode 3 with | Erhan Barutcu Marina Janochek |
| Script consultant | Ule Pender |
| Carriage design | Jos Smeets |
| Graphics | Angela Taylor |
| Music | John Cobban, John Higgins, Uli Ames |
| Associate producers | Adrian Shaw |
| Produced and directed by | Alistair Scott |
Resources
Teacher's Notes
Programme synopses, teaching points and illustrated worksheets were included in the teacher's guide book available for £3.95. Transcripts were not included but were instead published on the Channel 4 website - see the links section.
Activity Book
A colourful activity book for beginners in German was advertised alongside the series. Titled Mein Album, it did not directly relate to the TV programmes.
Video & DVD
The series was first released on video for £14.99. It was later released on DVD for £29.
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM including video clips from the TV series, interactive activities, and achievemet certificates for puplis who completed them, was available to licence for use on schools' interactive whiteboard, for PC or Mac systems. While the TV series and its clips are entirely in German, the CD-ROM includes some English instructions.
Interactive games based on the series were also available online through the organisation Learning & Teaching Scotland, later Education Scotland.
Links
- 4Learning Teacher's Notes: Hennings Haus (archived 2017)Full transcripts and translations into English of all 5 episodes.
- British Film Institute Collections for Hennings Haus
Related programmes
Sources & References
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