German

This course covers the following topics: the historical emergence of the landscape to its present appearance through the interaction of natural and anthropogenic factors; the impact of current land use and social processes on current and future landscape development and its impact on the natural balance and society; an overview of the broad semantic field of the terms landscape, cultural landscape, and natural landscape as well as their use in social and professional discussion. In general, the possibilities of environmental and landscape planning instruments are addressed, to react to the mentioned processes and to actively influence landscape development. Students learn about current challenges that play a key role in the further development of environmental planning as well as in the environmental assessment of projects and plans on the basis of current research approaches and results. The course content includes: the transformation of classical constellations in the human-environment-relationship and increasing also "green" sustainability competitions; important theoretical references without which the classification of good professional practice is hardly possible; how the effectiveness of environmental planning and assessment can be measured, how relevant methodological approaches can be designed (including strengths and weaknesses analyzes) and how the expected effects can be tracked; which manipulations can also be subject to environmental planning and testing and with which quality assurance approaches can be countered; the field of tension between established forms of participation to increased direct democratic participation and how this can be fruitfully taken up in planning and decision-making processes; the central issue of freedom of information and access to environmental data in their dimensions and practical implications, including the more difficult.

The search for the origins of the modern world leads back to the nineteenth century. In addition, there are many parallels to the nineteenth century in the world of the twenty-first century. The lectures, planned thematically rather than strictly chronologically, center around the role of revolutions and emotions, monarchy and liberalism, religion and assassinations, gender relations and global historical contexts. Lines of continuity make clear that many phenomena (such as democracy or emancipation) of today are best understood if they are traced back to the nineteenth century. The course seeks to make this complex, evocative and contradictory century more familiar to all those interested, by constantly seeking out the connections and contrasts to the present.

Within the framework of an academic conception of time, progression, and development, this course provides an overview of the development of various theories of language change and the history of language. Particular attention is paid to locating each major theory within shifting attitudes and focuses in the field of historical linguistics, as well as analyzing and categorizing each theory as it pertains to the methodologies used, the structural approaches, and philosophical conceptions of language.

Geography is a space-based science, whose overriding cognitive interest is dedicated to the collection, analysis, and explanation of complex spatial relationships that relate to the natural and anthropogenically created environment. Since the 1960s, leisure and tourism research has become an important sub-discipline of geography. Tourism geography deals with spatial structures of tourism in destinations of the supply and demand side on different geographic scale levels as well as with tourist-related processes and functions that produce them. In addition to phenomena of tourism, the course also covers leisure activities. The course deals with theories and concepts of tourism organization and development. It explains and analyzes the fundamentals as well as current trends, products, and problems in the tourism sector. The main focus is on three groups of topics: conceptual themes (e.g. tourism as a system, community based tourism, sustainable tourism, tourism and climate change, moral/cultural/ethical); topics that analyze relationships between globalization and tourism (e.g. regionalization trends, tourism and security); topics that explain various trends in tourism (e.g. demographic change, lifestyle tourism, dark tourism, world heritage tourism).

There are several different courses at the advanced level that cover specific topics within German language. Courses may cover: vocabulary, writing, presentation techniques, German literature, or German film.

The seminar begins with a historical overview of the different eras of energy use, from wood to shale gas. It starts with the industrial revolution and follows the energetic and social upheavals to the present day. Within each era, the course considers how societies and epochs are conditioned by their main source of energy and how international politics is to be understood as energy policy. The second half of the semester turns to climate policy. The scientific history of the topic is covered including the 1980s, the rise of UN climate diplomacy, and the hegemonic struggles over the interpretation of climate change and climate protection. The guiding question here is the connection between the interests of the institutions expressing themselves and the resulting positioning in climate policy.

This course takes into account the fact that planning is always a communicative process. It takes place against the background of the legal and social requirements for public participation in planning as well as the need to create acceptance for planning by involving affected and interested actors. In addition to the discussion of these requirements as well as practical examples of communication and cooperation in the context of nature conservation and environmental planning, the following topics are treated: basics of communication, moderation, participation process including mediation, creativity techniques, target groups and target group analysis, presentation techniques, communication through text and public relations. Students learn about typical social decision-making situations in which the environmental assessment of projects and plans plays a key role. A constellation for a project or a plan is dealt with in more detail on the basis of a case study, which is usually heavily influenced by social discourse (previously, for example, a Brandenburg wind farm in the forest or the Elbe pit to the Port of Hamburg).With the methodical approach of the constellation analysis the case studies are analyzed according to: the participating actors and actor constellations; the legal or societal, economic regulations, norms, framework conditions, which play a direct or indirect role; the scope for decision-making resulting from the respective technological or project/plan-immanent approach; the respective implications of the environmental situation. Subsequently, the meaning of the respective elements in the planning processes as well as their relation to each other are analyzed. It is determined which of the aspects promotes or inhibits the environmental friendliness and social compatibility of decision-making processes. This addresses constellations of actors, norms and discourses, political decisions, social developments, technical and economic developments as well as anthropogenic changes of natural systems to assess the significance of these influences in the context of environmental planning and environmental auditing and to analyze their implications. Overall, the students realize that action in the context of planning, environmental testing and nature conservation can not only be based on a scientific-ecological basis, but that social and political aspects must also be taken into account.