We present an API developed to access GermaNet, a lexical semantic database for German represented in XML. The API provides a set of software functions for parsing and retrieving information from GermaNet. Then, we present a case study which builds upon the GermaNet API and implements an application for computing semantic relatedness according to five different metrics. The package can, again, serve as a software library to be deployed in natural language processing applications. A graphical user interface allows to interactively experiment with the system. .
