It’s Summer 1968. Christiane has turned six on May 20.

German School System

Image credits: Toscho, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. | Graphics, adaptation and code are mine and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license (CC BY-SA 2.0).

(★) State schools combining Hauptschule and Realschule. They have different names in different states, for example “Sekundarschule”.

(★★) The Orientierungsstufe (grades 5 and 6) is differently implemented in the different states. Berlin and Brandenburg implement it as a part of the Elementary school. All the other states implement it as special conditions in the school types of secondary education during grade 5 and 6. Niedersachsen used to implement it as a dedicated school type, comparable to Middle School.