Community
Terms

1. What This Community Is

The SmarterGerman Community is a curated peer space for German learners, hosted on Circle. It is not a course, not a tutoring service, and not a teaching product. Members share notes, ask peers for help, and discuss German learning. The operator Michael Schmitz drops in from time to time at his own discretion.

2. Membership Paths

Active All Courses customers may join the community as a discretionary peer-support courtesy for the duration of their active subscription. Non-customers may apply through the public application form. Admission decisions are made on the basis of fit. SmarterGerman may pause admissions or community access at any time.

3. No Promise of Personal Feedback

The operator participates in the community voluntarily and at his sole discretion. There is no contractual entitlement to a response, no scheduled office hours, no guaranteed turnaround time, and no teacher-style review of member submissions. Members are expected to help each other.

4. Relationship to Paid Courses

For All Courses customers, community access is included with their subscription as a peer-support feature, alongside the deterministic AI tools inside the course player. The community is not a teaching component of the paid course and does not constitute Lernerfolgskontrolle under §1 FernUSG. Loss of the underlying subscription ends community access.

5. Conduct

Be kind and on-topic. No spam, no advertising of competing services, no hate speech, no harassment, no doxxing, no scraping of community content. All communication in English. Off-topic political, religious, or commercial content will be removed.

6. Removal

The operator may remove any member at any time for breach of these terms, for spam or abuse, or for behavior that degrades the community for others. Removal of a non-customer member is final. Removal of a customer member ends their community access but does not refund their All Courses subscription.

7. Non-Discrimination

Admission decisions are based on fit and capacity only. SmarterGerman does not discriminate on the basis of nationality, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability.

8. Data Handling

Application data (name, email, country, level, motivation, goal, German sample, and the consent timestamp for these terms) is stored for the lifetime of membership. Rejected applications are kept for 90 days for fraud and abuse prevention, then deleted. Members may request deletion of their data at any time by contacting [email protected]. See the main Privacy Policy for further details.

9. Acceptance and Changes

By submitting an application or by joining the community as a customer, you accept these terms. The operator may revise these terms; the current version is dated below. Material changes will be communicated by email to active members and by an in-community announcement.

10. Governing Law

These terms are governed by German law. Place of jurisdiction is Berlin where permitted by law.

11. Contact

Questions about these terms: [email protected]

Last updated: 26 May 2026