The journal generally focuses on topics pertaining to the German language, literature, and culture of Southeast Europe, with a special interest in Transylvania, the Banat, and Bukovina. Consequently, it has a strong comparative orientation, encouraging contributions that reflect both the similarities with and the differentiating aspects from the German cultural sphere, where German is the official language. The journal publishes articles about the local German culture, studies about cultural interferences and reciprocal influence in the evolution of German literature and the German literary language, about the systemic, structural, and cultural particularities of language phenomena in their chronological evolution. Germanistische Beiträge therefore supports the systematic and transdisciplinary approach of the German language, literature, and culture in/from Romania. The journal publishes individual or collective articles about the Romanian-German cultural relations in the Transylvanian space, cultural studies, literary or cultural criticism and theory, or contributions in the field of translation studies, sent to the editorial office either voluntarily or in response to a call. The journal has been publishing papers presented at national and international symposia and scientific sessions held in Sibiu, as well as reviews, since 2010.
The editorial team has continuously endeavoured to promote scientific cooperation in the field of German studies and to improve the presence of Germanistische Beiträge in renowned scientific databases (EBSCO, Index Copernicus, ERIH +) in the nearly 30 years of its existence, the first issue having appeared in 1993. The journal has been distributed by the publishing service provider Sciendo, a subsidiary of De Gruyter, since 2019, which increases the citation rate and the overall impact factor of the published papers. The journal will be published once a year starting with 2020 and will be double-blind reviewed.