Free University of Berlin

The course covers the variety of cinematic representations of National Socialism and the Holocaust, including an overview of the different filmic approaches used to represent and refer to the Third Reich. Students examine the most intense cinematic production phase of German history, which is the time between Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 and the end of the Second World War in 1945. Students examine movies by filmmakers such as Riefenstahl and Steinhoff, who created propaganda films glorifying the Nazi movement, as well as movies by Chaplin and Lubitsch who sought to fight the Nazi regime with satirical strategies. Students then analyze the equally wide spectrum of movie production after 1945. Some of the films discussed include: TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, TO BE OR NOT TO BE, SHOAH, SCHINDLER'S LIST, TRAIN OF LIFE, and INGLOURIOUS BASTARDS. Assessment is based on participation in working groups and a final exam.

Today, the EU is a world leader in alternative energy efforts, most notably Germany's Energiewende, which aims to replace coal and nuclear with wind and solar electricity. However, the EU is also interconnecting member-state gas, electrical, and transport systems and unifying its energy markets aided by its new European Energy Union (EEU) — whose formation was spurred by the Ukraine crisis and Europe's heavy dependence on Russian gas. This course investigates how these transitions impact EU carbon emissions, resources, economy, society, and geopolitical security. It begins by surveying the EU's energy resources and infrastructure as compared to the USA's. It then studies Europe´s energy transitions from medieval times through its 20th-century energy crises and wars. With this preparation, the course covers Europe's intended 21st-century energy transitions. Topics include: Germany's Energiewende, its technical, economic, and social challenges and its impact on EU neighbors; problems of oil dependence and traffic congestion in the German and EU transport sectors; EU natural gas policy – external issues including dependence on Russia and pipelines through Ukraine, attempts to diversify with Norwegian, North African, and Caspian gas and with US liquefied natural gas (LNG); and internal issues such as market unification, interconnection of pipelines, anti-monopoly efforts, fracking, and competition from cheap carbon-intensive coal; finally, German rejection of nuclear energy is viewed in light of risks and promises of next-generation reactors. Throughout, students follow current German, EU, and related global energy affairs. This course should be of interest to students of both social and natural sciences.

This course draws on several biographies of Hitler, and of those close to him, to study important episodes in his personal and political career. The course discusses his childhood, his experience of war and peace, and his accumulation of power, first in the Nazi party, next in the German parliament, then in Europe. The course studies his role in the sequences of events which culminated in the anschluss, or annexation, of Austria and in the Munich agreement. The course confronts the inadequacy of biography in relation to his personal responsibility for the war and for the holocaust. And the course sees that even the circumstances of his death gave rise to a debate over the role of government in the spread of news and other knowledge, and which reappeared in a different aspect when historians came to edit his autobiography, Mein Kampf, seventy years later. The course consists of a broad outline of German history from unification in 1871 to defeat in 1945, and of the enduring significance of Hitler in the study of the humanities.

This course addresses various topics in German and European 20th century history: different political ideas, systems, and movements, as well as social and cultural developments. The course compares and contrasts the German variety of these phenomena with other European varieties. Two major themes are the struggles between democracy and dictatorship, and capitalism and communism, which played out through the 20th century. The course connects these essentially ideological struggles to the two World Wars and the ensuing "Cold War," to memories of trauma, to the history of everyday life, pop culture, and gender, and to the experience of youth and immigrants in Germany. Through analyses of the interconnections and distinctions between all these aspects, the course provides participants with a better understanding of German society today.

This pre-semester course prepares foreign students for academic study at a German university. The focus is on the improvement of oral and written expression as well as grammar and lexical proficiency. The course covers selected topics on German politics and society within a historical context. In addition, excursions are planned to introduce students to German culture. Students work with cultural topics in everyday situations 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 CEFR, students consolidate and systematically build further basic grammar points and vocabulary. They expand their proficiency in all four skills. 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.