Variation in contemporary German not only represents an important area of current linguistic research but also plays a significant role in modern language teaching in schools and universities. This volume presents 36 contributions from linguistics and didactics (German as a native language, German as a foreign language) from German studies both domestically and abroad. Starting from general, cross-cutting questions regarding language diversity, multilingualism, and language instruction, selected areas of focus within the variety structure of contemporary German are introduced and illustrated with examples. Finally, various application fields of school language instruction and extracurricular language education, the construction of teaching materials, and performance assessment are discussed.