Are German ‘Klausuren’ limited to ‘Oberstufe Gymnasiasten’? or do junior Gymnasium students also take “Klausuren” rather than just “Prüfungen”.?
I look forward to your feedback
When I attended gymnasium in Bavaria in the 1990s, indeed we started to use the word Klausur (to refer to a pre-announced supervised written test) only from Oberstufe onwards (either 11th or 12th grade, I don’t remember which was the year when the line was drawn - at the time, gymnasium ended after 13th grade, which by now has been shortened to twelve). Before that, we would call the same thing a Schulaufgabe. The disambiguition page on German Wikipedia, however, states that this is Bavarian usage, so other states might call it differently.
My experience from late 1970s/early 1980s, Schleswig-Holstein
Up to grade 10 (i.e. up to and including Mittelstufe) written tests always were a Klassenarbeit. Never a Prüfung - a Prüfung in German always is not any test but the decisive test at the end of a course, or before graduation e.g. Fahrprüfung for driving license test.
From grade 11 (Oberstufe) what before was a Klassenarbeit became a Klausur. It is my impression that this was part of terminology becoming university-like - e.g. we had not one school year but two semesters.
The final written tests (one per subject) for the Abitur graduation (the graduation that qualifies for university) were a Schriftliche Prüfung (see above for Prüfung)
The written tests in university were a Klausur.
Exactly my experience making Abitur in 1987 in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Terminology was the similar as described by @mops in Lower Saxony in the 90s. For Abiturprüfung we had three written Klausuren and one oral exam (“mündliche Prüfung”).
Klassenarbeit (up to class 10) or Klausur (from class 11 to 13 and also later in university) counted toward “written grades”. In addition, there were also written tests (simply called “Test”) which counted towards oral grades. Oral grades and written grade were then combined to give a final grade after each semester (“Halbjahr”).
Thank you all. Very helpful indeed.
At my school, that type of written test (unannonced) was called an “Extemporale”, colloquially shortened by pupils to “Ex”.