German

This course examines how the University of Berlin (now Humboldt University) became Europe's philosophical center, tracing its evolution from its revolutionary founding in 1810 through its various transformations. By exploring the dynamic relationship between the university's philosophers and Berlin's cultural and political life, this course follows how philosophical ideas developed within its walls and resonated beyond them. The course examines key figures who taught, studied, or lectured at the university—from Hegel's influential tenure and the Young Hegelians, through Dilthey's establishment of the human sciences and Cohen's Neo-Kantianism, to the philosophical responses to war, division, and reunification. Furthermore, students explore how the University of Berlin shaped major philosophical movements while being shaped by Berlin's dramatic historical transformations: from Prussian reform era through imperial expansion, from Weimar culture through Nazi persecution, from Cold War division through reunification. By examining philosophical texts alongside historical documents and cultural materials, students understand how the University of Berlin fostered philosophical innovations that responded to and influenced some of the most significant political and cultural developments of modern Europe.

Berlin and Warsaw were two central theaters of the Holocaust. While in Berlin the Nazis planned the global murder of the Jews and attempted to transform the city into the capital of Nazi Europe, it was in Warsaw that they created Europe’s biggest ghetto, in which 100,000 Jews died before the first deportations to the Treblinka death camp in July 1942. In this seminar, the course studies and compares how the Jews were persecuted and murdered in Berlin and Warsaw; who helped them, how and why; and how the local population reacted to their persecution. In studying the Holocaust in both cities, students concentrate on the general frameworks for understanding the Holocaust, the plans of the perpetrators, the behavior of the collaborators, and the fate of particular actors, especially survivors, while analyzing their diaries, memoirs, and interviews. In this seminar, students read theoretical texts about the Holocaust and discuss the urban aspect of the genocide, while concentrating on persecution, murder and help. The course includes visits to museums and memorial sites in Berlin.

Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone, published in German in 2015, is a politically charged novel about the situation of African refugees in Berlin. Richard, an older German with a GDR background, gets involved with, and befriends, a number of African refugees at a protest camp on Oranienplatz in Kreuzberg. A former Classics professor who was recently forced into retirement, he empathizes with the refugees, who are not allowed to work under German asylum laws. Richard researches their plight and helps them with administrative and everyday tasks, even giving piano lessons to one of them. After a break-in at Richard’s house, he and his friends question their own prejudices and attempt to learn from the experience. The novel serves as a starting point for the exploration of the political and human rights issues surrounding the situation of African refugees in Berlin. Some additional materials are provided to round out the discussion.

This interdisciplinary course examines how gender and sexuality were experienced, represented, and contested in Weimar-era Germany (1918-1933). Drawing on a diverse array of primary sources - including theater, visual art, literature, film, and theoretical texts - students explore how marginalized individuals and communities navigated, expressed, and politicized their identities. Key topics include the emergence of sexual science and the conceptualization of the "third sex"; the proliferation of queer spaces, subcultures, and social movements in 1920s Berlin; intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability; artistic and literary depictions of gender fluidity and erotic desire; medicalization, criminalization, and the state's response to gender/sexual nonconformity; the rise of fascism and the violent backlash against LGBTQ+ rights. Through close engagement with primary sources and cutting-edge scholarly work, students gain a nuanced understanding of the complex, often contradictory dynamics that defined gender and sexuality in Weimar Germany. This course equips students with the critical tools to analyze the interplay between cultural production, social movements, and the politics of identity.

Foreigners, in particular people from the US or Canada, are often astonished when they hear how fascinated Germans are with Native Americans. So-called “hobbyist” events with Germans “playing” at being and dressing up as North American Indians, shows with Native Americans performing traditional dances or other rituals, but also theatrical festivals devoted to stories around the fictional Mescalero Apache Winnetou and his white (German) blood brother Old Shatterhand draw thousands of visitors, and it is still fair to say that most Germans have some memory of playing Indians when they were children. The creator of Winnetou, Karl May, is more widely read than Goethe or Thomas Mann, although the literary value of his texts is disputed. As puzzling as this may be from the outside: For more than 150 years, America and, in particular, North American Indians have played an important role in narratives about German national identity. Examining these narratives, students discover a complex web of fascination and identification with Native Americans on the one hand, fascination and ambivalence regarding the culture, politics, and economics of the US and white Americans on the other hand. Students study extracts from literary texts depicting Native Americans from the 19th and 20th centuries and analyze films based on Karl May and other authors, produced in the FRG and the GDR (West and East Germany). They discuss the political implications of images of Native Americans in the context of imperial Germany, in National Socialism, and in the GDR, and they review and evaluate concepts such as the “Noble Savage”, “cultural appropriation” and racial/ ethnic stereotyping and exoticism.

German academic writing is a skill that can be learned. By engaging with selected modern literary texts in the writing lab, students practice to develop research questions, prepare outlines, draft exposés, construct arguments, and comment on academic positions. The goal of the course is to enable participants to prepare well-structured term papers, bachelor's or master's theses, dissertations, and presentations. It also address the grammatical and
stylistic peculiarities of the German academic language, including intercultural distinctions. Moreover, students investigate the promise, perils, and limitations of artificial intelligence (AI), and the extent to which AI can facilitate many areas of academic work but not replace the need for critical and innovative thinking. By the end of the course, participants are equipped to successfully stand their ground in German academic discourse. At the same time, they acquire transferable skills to write clearly structured, concise academic texts in their own language.

Language anxiety and linguistic insecurity are central topics in multilingual and transcultural contexts. In this seminar, students investigate the causes and effects of language anxiety, in language acquisition as well as in the day to day. The class looks at different forms of linguistic insecurity and language anxiety that are affected by social norms, language ideologies, and individual experiences. The goal of the seminar is to develop a critical understanding of this phenomenon and how to approach linguistic insecurity. The readiness to work with research literature in English is required. Students need to take this seminar alongside the lecture "Second Language Acquisition and Multilingualism".

This course is for absolute beginners. This course introduces students to the fundamentals of German grammar, reading, and writing while developing some basic communicative skills. This course teaches students simple structures, lexis and phrases which enables them to communicate in a limited number of common everyday situations in German-speaking countries.