Free University of Berlin

This course is designed for the beginner student who has no prior knowledge of German and does not major/minor in German. It enables students to get familiarized with the German language and to deal with everyday situations during their stay in Berlin. Students develop basic communicative competences in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The foremost goal is for students to be able to navigate through daily activities in a German-speaking environment, such as ordering food in a restaurant, shopping at the grocery store/supermarket, getting around in the city, and conducting simple conversations about oneself (studies, hobbies, and fields of interest). Textbook: Momente A1 by Sandra Evan, and additional material, which is primarily dealing with everyday situations, helps students develop their individual language skills. One of the foci of the course is placed on Berlin and its surroundings. Therefore, students work with authentic material in class and on course-related excursions.

The course examines the history of Jewish life in Berlin from its beginnings in the sixteenth century, to the literary salons of Rahel Levin and Henriette Herz in the nineteenth century and the descriptions of the musician Konrad Latte, who survived the persecution of the Jews during National Socialism under false identity. The history of German-Jewish life in Berlin did not come to an end in the horrors of the Holocaust, but came to life again after 1989 and has set new cultural accents in the Berlin of the twenty-first century.

International Management is an advanced undergraduate module in the bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. The course first focuses on international differences in formal and informal institutions. National-level institutions are frameworks within which multinational enterprises (MNEs) do business around the world. The course examines the particularities of national institutional frameworks in some of the largest economies and explores how researchers have classified such institutional frameworks into typologies. The course then focuses on MNEs as organizations. The course examines how MNEs have been theoretically conceived and inquire how they maintain a balance between global integration and local adaptation in their international activities. The course focuses particularly on questions of strategy, governance, and human resource management. The course addresses the underrepresentation of women in international management. A particular focus of the course is undergraduate research and inquiry. The course provides insights into current research in the discipline regarding the governance of international labor standards and international management implications of the current transition to electric vehicles in the auto industry.