Playing with Perspectives: German Planspiele as Tools forPolitical Education

Planspiele-serious games developed and utilised to simulate complex real sociotechnical systems to train decision-making competencies-have a long and important tradition in Germanic history and culture (Herz and Bltte 2000;Rempe and Klsters 2006;Nohr 2019).Initially devised by the Prussian army as mechanisms of planning, exploring, and testing strategies of warfare during the late 18 th century and refined throughout the 19 th century, the games' value for education was soon recognised and the underlying principles of this kind of simulation games adopted to other scenarios, such as economics, politics, and social processes (Wintjes 2019).While Planspiele mark the foundation for complex simulations, they also had an impact on ludology more broadly, particularly since an early version from 1811 used a physical sandbox to depict different terrains, later leading to contemporary ideas of sandbox games as free-to-roam places (von Hilgers 2000: 62-63).After the Second World War, education systems in the two Germanies and Austria drew on the concept of analogue Planspiele to further political education, economic knowledge, strategic thinking, and civic engagement and to "foster a range of cognitive and emotional benefits, such as enhanced problem-solving abilities, collaborative skills, and resilience in the face of challenges" (Christopoulos and Mystakidis 2023, 1223).In recent years, these simulations entered the digital realm in the form of hybrid or fully digital games (Freese, Schier, and Mhlhausen 2018), while analogue simulation games still have a central role in German and Austrian curriculum planning.This paper seeks to analyse Planspiele for educational purposes as depictions of pathways from two distinct but related perspectives: firstly, the relationship between analogue and digital and their impact on teaching and learning; and secondly, the relationship between public discourses and education to foster civic engagement and informed decision-making processes.This analysis uses a qualitative, multimodal