Germany

The German social system has long been considered the archetype of the conservative welfare state. Germany introduced a far-reaching social security system as early as the 1880s, which has shown amazing durability despite wars and across forms of government. But has the social security system remained true to its conservative reputation, or has it moved away from this ideal type in recent decades? And what are the effects of these changes on the social impact of social policy? In this seminar students consider these questions.

Over thirty years after German reunification, this course revisits the period in which two German states existed, examining the fraught and complicated, but nonetheless deeply symbiotic, relationship they had with each other. How did two German states come into being in the first place? How did they develop, both separately and in parallel, and how did they determine each other’s history? Some of the debates the course engages with include: to what extent did the Federal Republic inherit the political, social, economic, and cultural mantle of Hitler’s Third Reich? Was there any choice but to reintegrate former Nazis into West German public life? Was the GDR a totalitarian state, exercising complete control over its citizens’ lives? Did the Berlin Wall have any advantages? How were immigrants and foreigners treated in the two German states? Finally, from the vantage point of the 2020s, the course considers whether one can now speak of a unified German nation, in which the historical divisions between east and west have been overcome.

The course provides an introduction to art and politics in the context of dictatorship, focusing on the examples of Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR, Mussolini's Italy, and Franco's Spain. In the first part of the semester, the students gain an understanding of art in a democratic society by analyzing the art and architecture of the Weimar Republic in Germany. Special attention is paid to Jewish artists like Max Liebermann, Erich Mendelsohn, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and El Lissitzky. The course examines the official art and architecture in Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union, focusing on the works of Albert Speer, Giuseppe Terragni, Arno Breker, and Leni Riefenstahl. Modernist and Jewish artists were persecuted, forced into emigration, or deported to concentration camps. Under the Nazi regime in Germany, the exhibition "Degenerate Art" served to propagate the fascist idea of what art should not be like. The course further examines the relation between art and the Holocaust. After 1945, artists like Wolf Vostell, Max Grundig, or George Segal focused in their paintings, sculptures, and installations on the totalitarian experience and the Shoah in particular. Additionally, art also served as a medium to commemorate the Holocaust: the memorials at Buchenwald concentration camp or the Holocaust memorial in Berlin are prominent examples. In the course of the semester, students gain an overview of important European art and architecture movements of the early twentieth century. In addition, the course provides a deeper understanding of art under totalitarian conditions. As a complement to the lectures, formal field-trips to historically significant sites and museums constitute an integral component of the course.

This course sets the politics of German coal in technological, social, and environmental perspective. The course examines trends in the German energy mix—with a focus on the decline of nuclear energy as a source of power and the rise of natural gas, biofuels, and wind—and considers the extent to which those trends relate to the policy stances of the various political parties in government. The course also discusses the role of coal at pivotal moments in German history: before and after unification in 1871; from the Treaty of Versailles to the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923; and after the establishment, in 1951, of the European Coal and Steel Community, the institutional forerunner of the European Union.

According to a dominant historiography, philosophy is a Western endeavor. Its roots are to be found in Europe, more precisely in Ancient Greece, and its most significant developments are due to Western thinkers. In recent years, however, this narrative has been challenged by scholars and criticized from various sides. The narrative, it is argued, has itself a history: it was born at the end of the eighteenth century and came together with a marginalization of non-Western contributions to the origins and developments of the discipline. The process of appropriation of philosophy by Western historians, it is further argued, was not independent of racist prejudices and theories. This seminar is devoted to the recent literature on these topics. It aims to see how issues about race and racism have shaped current historiography of philosophy and explores alternative narratives that have been suggested to change this historiography.

This course for foreign students is designed to improve students’ language skills and vocabulary. Areas of focus include grammar, conversation, writing exercises, and listening and reading exercises. In addition, excursions are planned to introduce students to German culture. Students work with cultural and historical topics on an academic level and broaden their intercultural knowledge. They are introduced to independent learning methods and familiarize themselves with typical learning situations at German universities. In this class at the B1 level according to the CEFR, students further develop their vocabulary and command of grammatical structures as well as corresponding competencies in university-specific situations. The class takes intercultural and methodological aspects of foreign language learning into consideration, and students are introduced to German culture and society in more depth. The B1 level is split into two courses, the B1.1 course covers the first half of the level and the B1.2 course covers the second half of the level.