The German language debating championship is about to start in Vienna, Austria. Competing for the title are 68 teams from Germany, Switzerland and Austria, or debating societies from Aachen, Bayreuth, Berlin, Bonn, Dresden, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Graz, Göttingen, Halle, Hamburg, Hannover, Heidelberg, Ingolstadt, Jena, Karlsruhe, Kiel, Klagenfurt, Köln, Konstanz, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Mainz, Marburg, München, Münster, Potsdam, Regensburg, Salzburg, Stuttgart, St. Gallen, Tübingen, Wien, Würzburg and Zürich.

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It’s the first time the German language debating championship (Meisterschaft im deutschsprachigen Debattieren or MDD) is hosted outside Germany. The MDD is part of the ZEIT DEBATTEN series. Behind it are VDCH in cooperation with the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT, with the support of Deutsche Telekom and the media partner of a major public German broadcaster (ZDF). The series has been staged in alternating cities for more than a decade under the patronage of the former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt.