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One page, and what belongs on it
The German Anschreiben is one page, and one page is not a guideline that stretches. Three or four paragraphs, no more, laid out in a fixed order that a recruiter reads by position rather than by content. Top right, your own address. Below it, on the left, the company's. Then the date, then a Betreff line that names the job and where you saw it — Bewerbung als Redakteur, Ihre Anzeige vom 3. Juni. The Betreff has no word Betreff in front of it and no full stop. Then the salutation, the body, the close, your name, and at the foot the word Anlagen with a list of what is attached. The body has a job to do in a set order. First paragraph: which job, and why this company — one sentence of genuine reason, not flattery. Second: what you have done that matches the ad, pointing at the CV rather than repeating it. Third: what you would bring, which is where um … zu earns its place. Fourth, one line: your availability and the closing subjunctive. If you can name the ad's own words back at it — they asked for Kenntnisse in X and you have them — do, because many German recruiters read the letter against the ad point by point. What not to do, and each of these is common in letters written by English speakers. Do not open with Ich heiße — the name is already at the top twice. Do not write a paragraph about your passion; German applications are not persuaded by enthusiasm and the register for it does not exist. Do not use exclamation marks. Do not repeat the CV in prose. And do not leave the name out if you can find it: a call like the one in the next lesson gets you a Frau Weber to write to, and Sehr geehrte Frau Weber is worth more than a perfect Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren. One encouraging thing. Because the form is this fixed, it is learnable in an afternoon, and a correct German letter from a foreigner reads as competence rather than as a native performance. The parts that are judged are whether you match the ad and whether the page is tidy — not whether your German is flawless.