Our multi media course acquaints students with present day life and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Authentic documents and interviews with native speakers from all walks of life serve as a first-hand introduction to the German-speaking countries. An interactive learning software, as well as related Internet audio-visual materials emphasize the mastery of speaking, writing, and reading skills that are the foundation for further study. Three hours a week for explanation and demonstration, one hour a week in small TA- sections.
Fall and spring semesters. Fall semester: Senior Lecturer Emerita Schütz and Visiting Professor Gutzman. Spring semester: Senior Lecturer Emerita Schütz.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025A continuation of GERM 101, with increased emphasis on reading of selected texts. Three class meetings per week plus one additional conversation hour in small sections, with individual work on Moodle.
Requisite: GERM 101 or equivalent. Fall semester: Senior Lecturer Emerita Schütz. Spring semester: Senior Lecturer Emerita Schütz and Visiting Professor Gutzmann.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025Systematic review of grammar, aural and speaking practice, discussion of video and television programs, and reading of selected texts in contemporary German. Stress will be on the acquisition and polishing of verbal, reading, writing, and comprehension skills in German. Three hours per week for explanation and structured discussion, plus one hour per week in small sections for additional practice with German language assistants.
Requisite: GERM 102 or two years of secondary-school German or equivalent. Fall semester. Professor Gilpin.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025Practice in free composition and analytical writing in German. Exercises in pronunciation and idiomatic conversation. Supplementary work with audio and video materials. Oral reports on selected topics and reading of literary and topical texts. Conducted in German. Three hours per week, plus one hour per week in small sections for additional practice with German language assistants.
Requisite: GERM 205 or equivalent, based on departmental placement decision. Spring semester. Professor Gilpin.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025Reading, discussion, and close analysis of a wide range of cultural materials, including selections from Die Zeit and Der Spiegel, essays, and short works by modern authors and song writers (Böll, Brecht, Biermann, Udo Lindenberg, etc.). Materials will be analyzed both for their linguistic features and as cultural documents. Textual analysis includes study of vocabulary, style, syntax, and selected points of grammar. Round-table discussions, oral reports and structured composition exercises. Students will also view unedited television programs, work with the Internet, and listen to recordings of political and scholarly speeches, cabaret, protest songs, and to authors reading from their own works. Conducted in German. Three class hours per week, plus an additional hour in small sections.
Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Fall semester. Senior Lecturer Emerita Schütz.
2023-24: Not offeredFocusing on one contemporary novel, we will develop strategies for analyzing texts for their literary expression, their linguistic and stylistic features, and their cultural content. Additional materials (Internet, video, CD-ROMs, etc.) on literary and cultural topics as well as articles drawn from history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. Three class hours per week, plus one hour with German Language Assistants.
Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Instructor will contact enrolled students to arrange meeting times and location. Omitted 2014-15.
2023-24: Not offeredAn examination of cultural developments in the German tradition, from the Early Middle Ages to the rise of Prussia and the Napoleonic Period. We shall explore the interaction between socio-political factors in German-speaking Europe and works of “high art” produced in the successive eras, as well as Germany’s centuries-long search for a cultural identity. Literature to be considered will include selections from Tacitus’ Germania, the Hildebrandslied, a courtly epic and some medieval lyric poetry; the sixteenth-century Faust chapbook and other writings of the Reformation Period; Baroque prose, poetry, and music; works by Lessing and other figures of the German Enlightenment; Sturm und Drang, including early works by Goethe, Schiller, and their younger contemporaries. Selected audio-visual materials will provide examples of artistic, architectural, and musical works representative of each of the main periods. Conducted in German.
Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Fall semester. Professor Rogowski.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2023, Fall 2024A survey of literary and cultural developments in the German tradition from the Romantic Period to contemporary trends. Major themes will include the Romantic imagination and the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century, the literary rebellion of the period prior to 1848, Poetic Realism and the Industrial Revolution, and various forms of aestheticism, activism, and myth. In the twentieth century we shall consider the culture of Vienna, the “Golden Twenties,” the suppression of freedom in the Nazi state, issues of exile and inner emigration, and the diverse models of cultural reconstruction after 1945. Authors represented will include Friedrich Schlegel, Brentano, Heine, Büchner, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Kafka, Brecht, Grass, Wolf, and Handke. Music by Schubert, Wagner, Mahler, and Henze; samples of art and architecture. Conducted in German.
Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Spring semester. Professor Brandes.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2025“Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!” to Berlin, Europe’s youngest metropolis. Virtually exploding in the early 1900s into a creative and influential urban center, the new Berlin reacted to the political challenges of imperialism, war, revolution, and inflation with wit, sarcasm, and radical politics--the perfect proving ground for those seeking personal freedom and political change, including artists, amateurs, reformers, and revolutionaries. We will trace the beginnings and flowering of urban modernism in Berlin public life, architecture, the fine arts and theater, up to the Nazi virulent attacks on modern art and urban lifestyles as “degenerate”. Course materials focus on the changes from pre-modern to urban metropolis, including such topics as alternative ways of life in the social and cultural spaces of the city; the celebration of the exotic; new concepts of sexuality and the body; ethnicity and difference; and the ill-fated German-Jewish symbiosis. Readings and viewings include novels, films, essays, design, architecture, theater, cabaret, jazz, and montage in the arts. Conducted in German.
Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Omitted 2014-15. Professor Brandes.
2023-24: Not offeredMigration is integral to the human experience, having become more common as our global economy encourages the free movement of people and ideas. About twenty percent of all people living in Germany today have a migration background, making life between cultures central to the ongoing discussion “What is German?” Over the centuries, many foreign-born persons immigrated into the German lands, and Germans fled from their home country, either to escape political repression or to look for better opportunities. We will explore issues of exile, alienation, gender, race, migration, and post-migration since the late eighteenth century, focusing on the German experience. Readings will include literature and essays by Herder, Chamisso, Heine, Kafka, Brecht, Anna Seghers, Thomas Mann, Paul Celan, Jurek Becker, and Thilo Sarrazin as well as texts in German by various foreign-born writers currently living in Germany, among them Herta Müller, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Yadé Kara, Wladimir Kaminer, Feridun Zaimoğlu, and Rafik Schami. Films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Fatih Akin, Angelina Maccarone, Jörg Grünler, Tamara Staudt, Lars Becker, Züli Aladağ, Yasemin Şamdereli. Conducted in German.
Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Omitted 2014-15. Professor Brandes.
2023-24: Not offeredThe course with the shortest reading list ever-not! Contrary to popular opinion, Germans (and their Austrian and Swiss neighbors) do have a sense of humor that has produced a wide variety of both high-brow and popular forms, ranging from the absurdist skits of Karl Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt, to raunchy “Ostfriesenwitze,” and to the current boom in sex and “relationship” comedies in film. We will explore broadsheets and cartoons (Wilhelm Busch, Loriot, E. O. Plauen, Uli Stein), populist theater forms such as the operetta (Strauss, Lehar) and farcical “Volkstheater,” sophisticated literary comedies (Tieck, Büchner, Sternheim, Dürrenmatt), social satire in print and other media (Heine, Kraus, Tucholsky, Staudte, Irmtraud Morgner, Robert Gernhardt, Eckhard Henscheid, Luise Pusch, Elfriede Jelinek), parody pastiche in song and movies (Comedian Harmonists, Max Raabe, Bully Herbig), and political humor in cabaret from the Wilhelmine period, the Weimar Republic, inside and outside the Third Reich, communist East Germany, and the multi-ethnic Germany of today (Wedekind, Werner Finck, Erika Mann, Gerhart Polt, Sinasi Dikmen). Primary materials will be supplemented by theoretical readings, including Arthur Koestler, Volker Klotz, Susanne Schäfer, and-of course-Sigmund Freud. Conducted in German.
Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Spring semester. Professor Rogowski.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course will trace the impact of early twentieth-century modernization on the cultural consciousness of artists and politicians. We will first study classical modernism in the context of European and Western avant-garde movements, with emphasis on art and society in Germany. Topics include the effect of rapid urbanization and the rise of modern mass culture; modern constructions of gender and nature; the emergence of visual culture and mass media; the aesthetic revolt and literary visions of Futurism, Dada, and Expressionism; and the radical activism of proletarian didactic art. We will then trace the anti-modernist responses, such as Kaiser Wilhelm’s retrogressive push for national art; the socialist realist doctrine of Stalin’s cultural policies; Hitler’s prohibition of modernist art as “degenerate”; and finally the censorship and self-censorship of certain modernist artists, in the name of political progress. Texts by Hofmannsthal, Hauptmann, Schnitzler, Wedekind, Heinrich Mann, Kafka, Hesse, Rilke, Benjamin, Brecht, and Anna Seghers; selected art by Modersohn-Becker, Kirchner, and Kollwitz; samples of architecture, early radio, films, and music. Conducted in German.
Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Omitted 2014-15. Professor Brandes.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course examines the theme of travel and exploration in German literature and culture from the late eighteenth century to the present. We will look at both historical and fictional accounts of journeys, from travel diaries and contemporary travel blogs to novellas, novels, poetry, and film. What factors have pushed Germans to leave their homes, and what has pulled them to particular destinations? What modes of travel do they choose, and how does the development of modern means of transportation change the nature of travel? In asking such questions, we will examine texts in their historical and cultural contexts, while exploring what they reveal about perceptions of time and space, conceptions of the foreign and the familiar, and the pivotal role played by place in notions of national, cultural, and individual identity. Along with Alexander von Humboldt’s overseas explorations and Goethe’s inaugural “Bildungsreisen” to Italy, with journeys real and imagined of the Romantic period, we will consider current trends, such as Germans exploring Germany on foot and bicycle. Further texts, song cycles, and films by Eichendorff, Heine, Franz Schubert, Fontane, Anna Seghers, Daniel Kehlmann, Hans-Josef Ortheil, W. G. Sebald, Yoko Tawada, Holger Teschke, Christoph Hein, Felicitas Hoppe. Conducted in German.
Requisite: GERM 210 or equivalent. Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Visiting Professor Gutzmann.
(Offered as GERM 347 and FAMS 323.) This course examines the German contribution to the emergence of film as both a distinctly modern art form and as a product of mass culture. The international success of Robert Wiene’s Expressionist phantasmagoria, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), heralded the beginning of a period of unparalleled artistic exploration, prior to the advent of Hitler, during which the ground was laid for many of the filmic genres familiar today: horror film (F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu), detective thriller (Fritz Lang’s M), satirical comedy (Ernst Lubitsch’s The Oyster Princess), psychological drama (G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box), science fiction (Lang’s Metropolis), social melodrama (Pabst’s The Joyless Street), historical costume film (Lubitsch’s Passion), political propaganda (Slatan Dudow’s Kuhle Wampe), anti-war epic (Pabst’s Westfront 1918), a documentary montage (Walther Ruttmann’s Berlin – Symphony of a Big City), and the distinctly German genre of the “mountain film” (Leni Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light). Readings, including Siegried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Lotte H. Eisner, Béla Balázs, and Rudolf Arnheim, will address questions of technology and modernity, gender relations after World War I, the intersection of politics and film, and the impact of German and Austrian exiles on Hollywood. Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.
Spring semester. Professor Rogowski.
2023-24: Not offeredThe course will explore the rich legacy of one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. We will examine Rilke’s peculiar background in the German-speaking minority in Hapsburg Prague; his situation in the literary world of fin-de-siècle Munich; the significance of his encounter with Lou Andreas-Salomé; the intellectual experiences that shaped his outlook on life and on poetry (Nietzsche; Russia and Tolstoy; Paris and Rodin); his artistic breakthrough in the two-volume New Poems (1907) and the concept of the "Ding-Gedicht"; the existential crisis reflected in the modernist novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910); his reflections on the role of poetry in a modern world of uncertainty in texts such as A Letter to a Young Poet (1903); his artistic crisis of the 1910s; and the extraordinary double achievement of 1922, The Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. Conducted in English (no knowledge of German required), with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.
Omitted 2014-15. Professor Rogowski.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as GERM 352 and EUST 342.) Representative works by each of the three contemporary authors will be read both for their intrinsic artistic merit and as expressions of the cultural, social, and political concerns of their time. Among these are such topics as the dehumanization of the individual by the state, people caught between conflicting ideologies, and literature as admonition, political statement, or escape. Readings of short stories and a novel by Kafka, including “The Judgment,” “The Metamorphosis,” and The Castle; poems, short prose, and plays by Brecht, e.g., The Three-Penny Opera, Mother Courage, and The Good Woman of Setzuan; fiction and essays by Mann, including “Death in Venice” and Buddenbrooks. Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.
Spring semester. Professor Brandes.
2023-24: Not offeredBeginning in late eighteenth-century Germany and continuing to the present day, the course traces the development of an ideology: the belief that the artist is a "special case" in society, an individual with extraordinary gifts and extraordinary burdens, whose mission entails both privilege and suffering. Examples will range from the young Goethe's propagation of the idea of artist-as-unique-genius in the 1770s, through the nineteenth century's various images of the artist as saint/madman/seer/invalid/hero/charlatan, to the debates in Weimar- and Nazi-Germany over artistic "engagement" with radical politics, and on to contemporary debates over the role of the artist in a globalized world. We shall draw mainly on works—prose fiction, verse, philosophical essays, music, paintings, film—in the modern German tradition, but with important glimpses at trends in other European countries and the U.S.A. Artists and writers to be examined will include Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffman, Caspar David Friedrich, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Käthe Kollwitz, Anna Seghers, Leni Riefenstahl, and Christa Wolf. Conducted in German.
Requisite: GERM 310 or equivalent. Omitted 2014-15. Visiting Professor Gutzmann.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as GERM 360, ARCH 360, EUST 360 and FAMS 316.) What is performance? What constitutes an event? How can we address a phenomenon that has disappeared the moment we apprehend it? How does memory operate in our critical perception of an event? How does a body make meaning? These are a few of the questions we will explore in this course, as we discuss critical, theoretical, and compositional approaches in a broad range of multidisciplinary performance phenomena emerging from European--primarily German--culture in the twentieth century. We will focus on issues of performativity, composition, conceptualization, dramaturgy, identity construction, representation, space, gender, and dynamism. Readings of performance theory, performance studies, gender studies, and critical/cultural studies, as well as literary, philosophical, and architectural texts will accompany close examination of performance material. Students will develop performative projects in various media (video, performance, text, online) and deliver a number of critical oral and written presentations on various aspects of the course material and their own projects. Performance material will be experienced live when possible, and in text, video, audio, digital media and online form, drawn from selected works of Dada and Surrealism, Bauhaus, German Expressionism, the Theater of the Absurd, Tanztheater, and Contemporary Theater, Performance, Dance, Opera, New Media, and Performance Art. A number of films, including Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, Oskar Schlemmer’s Das Triadische Ballett, Fernand Léger’s Ballet Mécanique, and Kurt Jooss’ Der Grüne Tisch, will be also screened. Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.
Omitted 2014-15. Professor Gilpin.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as ARCH 363, GERM 363, EUST 363, and FAMS 370.) How is memory constructed and represented? How is it possible to bear witness, and what exactly is involved? Who is authorized to testify, to whom, when? Whose story is it? Is it possible to tell "the story" of a traumatic event? What are the disorders of testimony, and how and where do they emerge? This course will observe the workings of trauma (the enactment and working-through of collective and individual symptoms of trauma), memory, and witnessing in various modes of everyday life. We will examine notions of catastrophe, disaster, accident, and violence, and explore the possibilities and impossibilities of bearing witness in many forms of cultural production: in fiction, poetry, architecture, critical theory, oral and written testimonies, visual art, monuments, memorials, philosophy, science, cartoons, film, video, theater, television reportage, newspaper documentation, performance, online, and in our public and domestic spaces. We will study various representations of trauma, paying particular attention to events in Germany and Europe from the twentieth century, as well as to 9/11 and other recent international events. Material to be examined will be drawn from the work of Pina Bausch, Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski, Cathy Caruth, Paul Celan, Marguerite Duras, Peter Eisenman, Shoshana Felman, Florian Freund, Jochen Gerz, Geoffrey Hartman, Rebecca Horn, Marion Kant, Anselm Kiefer, Ruth Klüger, Dominick LaCapra, Claude Lanzmann, Dori Laub, Daniel Libeskind, W.G. Sebald, Art Spiegelman, Paul Virilio, Peter Weiss, Wim Wenders, Elie Wiesel, Christa Wolf, and others. Conducted in English with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.
Fall semester. Professor Gilpin.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as GERM 364, ARCH 364, and EUST 364.) This course will address a number of developments and transformations in contemporary urban architecture and performance from an international perspective. We will explore issues including, but not limited to, trauma, memory, absence, perception, corporeality, representation, and the senses in our examination of recent work in Germany and elsewhere, and read a number of texts from the fields of philosophy, critical theory, performance studies, and visual and architectural studies, in an attempt to understand how architecture is beginning to develop compositional systems in which to envision dynamic and responsive spaces in specific cultural contexts. We will focus our research on the work of a number of German and international architects, performance, and new media artists, including Jochen Gerz, Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock, Horst Hoheisel, Micha Ullman, Shimon Attie, Daniel Libeskind, Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, Greg Lynn, Mark Goulthorpe, R & Sie(n), Axel Kilian, Paul Privitera, Hani Rashid and Lise-Ann Couture, Herzog and de Meuron, Archigram, William Forsythe, Jan Fabre, Rachel Whiteread, Rebecca Horn, Sasha Waltz, Richard Siegal, Michael Schumacher, Robert Wilson, the Blix Brothers of Berlin, Pina Bausch, Granular Synthesis, Sponge, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Toni Dove, and many others. Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.
Omitted 2014-15. Professor Gilpin.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as GERM 365 ARCH 365, and EUST 365.) This is a course about what happens to difficult memories: memories that are intensely personal, but made public, memories that belong to communities, but which become ideologically possessed by history, politics, or the media. How are memories processed into memorials? What constitutes a memorial? What gets included or excluded? How is memory performed in cultural objects, spaces, and institutions? What is the relationship between the politics of representation and memory? Who owns memory? Who is authorized to convey it? How does memory function? This course will explore the spaces in which memories are “preserved” and experienced. Our attention will focus on the transformation of private and public memories in works of architecture, performance, literature, and the visual arts primarily in Germany, Europe, and the United States. Preference given to German majors and European Studies majors, as well as to students interested in architecture/design, performance, the visual arts, interactive installation and/or the environment. Conducted in English, with German majors required to do a substantial portion of the reading in German.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2014-15. Professor Gilpin.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2016, Fall 2021(Offered as GERM 368, ARCH 368, EUST 368, and FAMS 368.) This research seminar will explore conceptions of space as they have informed and influenced thought and creativity in the fields of cultural studies, literature, architecture, urban studies, performance, and the visual, electronic, and time-based arts. Students will select and pursue a major semester-long research project early in the semester in consultation with the professor, and present their research in its various stages of development throughout the semester, in a variety of media formats (writing, performance, video, electronic art/interactive media, installation, online and networked events, architectural/design drawings/renderings), along with oral presentations of readings and other materials. Readings and visual materials will be drawn from the fields of literature and philosophy; from architectural, art, and film theory and history; from performance studies and performance theory; and from theories of technology and the natural and built environment. Emphasis on developing research, writing, and presentation skills is a core of this seminar.
Preference given to German majors and European Studies majors, as well as to students interested in architecture/design, performance, film/video, interactive installation, and/or the environment. Conducted in English. German majors will select a research project focused on a German Studies context, and will do a substantial portion of the readings in German.
Limited to 15 students. Enrollment requires attendance at the first class meeting. Spring semester. Professor Gilpin.
Part of the Global Classroom Project. The Global Classroom Project uses videoconferencing technology to connect Amherst classes with courses/students outside the United States.
2023-24: Not offeredFall and spring semesters. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024Spring semester. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2025