Our story

For over 140 years, Berlitz has been delivering language lessons and cultural training to help our students progress further. Find out more about how we got here.

How it all began…

After immigrating from Germany in 1870, our company founder, Maximilian Berlitz, took an opportunity to give language lessons in the United States. The son of a family of teachers and mathematicians, he used his exceptional language skills to teach Greek, Latin, and six other European languages.

After a few years of private tutoring, he joined the Warner Polytechnic College in Providence, Rhode Island, where he became a professor of French and German.

Upon hiring a French-only speaking assistant, Berlitz realized that the traditional, "grammar-translation" teaching method was not as effective as incorporating the new language right away in conversation. From then on, he began to use more immersive teaching in his lessons, and the Berlitz Method was born.

Evolving for a changing world

Initially focusing on delivering language lessons for travelers and individual learners, over the years, Berlitz has evolved to help a whole host of students, businesses, schools, and governments embrace language as the key to communication, connection, and cultural understanding.

From working professionals to families moving abroad, Berlitz offers personalized learning paths that suit your learning style, location, and learning objectives, to provide an immersive language and cultural learning experience that can help open your world to new opportunities.