Modernist Memories: Architecture and Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany

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Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche

Professor Kathleen James-Chakraborty (University College Dublin), an expert on 20th century German architecture and author of numerous publications will lecture on architecture and identity in Germany at Wesleyan University on Tuesday,  Sept. 25, at 4:30pm, in 41 Wyllys, room 112.

Although the most prominent buildings  in Berlin since the fall of the wall in 1989, such as Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, Norman Foster’s renovation of the Reichstag, and David Chipperfield’s reconstruction of the Neues Museum, are often understood as examples of a postmodernist strategy, their juxtaposition of historic architecture, often damaged in the Second World War, and modern forms that recall the architecture of the Weimar Republic, are in fact only relatively recent examples of an architectural strategy that can be traced back to the founding of the Federal Republic.  Now associated with coming to terms with the atrocities of the Third Reich, in its original entirely modernist context this pairing originally encompassed conservative nostalgia for a pre-democratic past even as it helped define a specifically non-Communist present.  Following reunification it served as alternative to the postmodernism with which it is too often confused in part because the degree of modernism’s rupture with the past is often exaggerated.

This talk is made possible through the Department of Art and Art History, Samuel Silipo ’85 Distinguished Visitor Fund, and the German Studies Department.

Kaffeestunde – Study Abroad

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Interested in studying abroad in Germany?

Join us for our first Kaffeestunde this semester in the German House at 65 Lawn Avenue on Wednesday, September 19 from 5-6:30 p.m. You will meet former Wesleyan students who have studied in Regensburg and Berlin. They will talk about their experiences and answer questions.

German Studies Majors and Students: post-graduation and summer plans

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Matthew Alexander ’12,  a Phi Beta Kappa scholar and the recipient of the Blankenagel Prize for his outstanding accomplishments in German, also received a Fulbright assistantship to teach English at a high school in Saxony, Germany. Matt’s thesis, for which he received high honors, was a translation and adaptation of Lord Schadt’s online play, “Lost Modern Love.” The play premiered at Wesleyan in May 2012 under Matt’s direction. An excerpt of his adaptation has been published in VOID Digest Vol. 2, May 2012, pp. 57-59. This summer Matt will intern as a script reader in Los Angeles.

Max Flescher ’12 is an alternate for a Fulbright teaching assistantship to teach ESL in Austria.

 

 

Lynn Heere ’12 received a Fulbright assistantship to teach English at a high school in Thuringia, Germany. She also received a teaching assistantship for English in Kärnten, Austria, but decided in favor of Germany. Lynn wrote her thesis, for which she received honors, on “From Spassguerilla to Stadtguerilla: The Theory and Praxis of the West German Student Movement.”

 

Steven Le ’12 will be teaching English as a Foreign Language in Vietnam. He leaves to take up his teaching position in July.

Jessica Spates ’12 received the Baden-Württemberg scholarship for study and research at Freiburg University in Germany.

Katherine Wolf ’12 was awarded the Scott Prize for excellence in foreign-language study. A major in German Studies and art history, she wrote her senior essay on “The Fabric of the Bel Composto: Bernini’s Draperies and the Redefinition of the Arts.”

Carmen Yip ’12, a Phi Beta Kappa scholar and double major in German Studies and sociology, will be working as a resource analyst for Deutsche Bank in New York. She will start her training in September 2012, then move to London, followed by Frankfurt, before returning to New York City. Carmen plans to spend the summer at home in Hong Kong.

 

Wesleyan University Program in Regensburg Participants

Hsiao Tung Huang ’12, a dance major, declined an offer to study in the European Erasmus Program in favor of the dance program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. But she hopes to return to Germany very soon!

Lana ’12,  a music major, received the Baden-Württemberg scholarship and will conduct research at Heidelberg University in Germany next year. She hopes to find a performing arts internship in Heidelberg.

 

And what are some of our sophomores and juniors doing this summer?  

Julius Bjornson ’14 has been studying in Regensburg since January 2012 and will finish his semester at the end of July. Then he will move to France, where he will spend a semester in Wesleyan’s Paris program.

Nathaniel Elmer ’14 received a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) University Summer Course Scholarship for the Humboldt University summer course “Deutsch Erleben.”

James Gardner ’13, a Mellon Mays Fellow, has been studying under the auspices of the Berlin Consortium for German Studies at Berlin’s Free University since February 2012, while conducting independent research on Afro-Germans.

Mari Jarris ’14  received a scholarship from the DAAD to attend a German language and culture course from July 8 to August 2 at Bremen University in Germany.

Julian Theseira ’14 received a DAAD scholarship to attend a summer course on German literature at the Catholic university Eichstätt-Ingolstadt from July 17 to August 9, 2012. The course focuses on the discovery of physical spaces in modern German literature.

Oscar Takabvirwa ’14 has been studying at Regensburg University since January 2012; the semester there ends in late July.

Avery Trufelman ’13 received the Prentice Prize, given to a junior or senior who excels in German or French. Avery also received the DAAD “internxchange” scholarship, which will enable her to spend 11 weeks in Berlin this summer. She will attend a 6-week seminar program designed to deepen the recipient’s understanding of the politics, society, and culture of Germany, the country’s current media landscape, and working conditions for journalists. She will complete her stay with a 5-week internship with a German newspaper, (online) magazine, TV or radio station, or press or PR agency in or near Berlin. 

 

German Studies End-of-the-Year Party

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The party started off with Leo Lensing introducing our two senior thesis writers, Lynn Heere and Matthew Alexander. They both gave excellent presentations of their works. While Lynn talked about the German student movement in the Sixties, Matt introduced us to the German playwright, Lord Schadt.

Lynn Heere: “From Spassguerilla to Stadtguerilla: The Theory and Praxis of the West German Student Movement.”

Matthias Alexander: “Lost Modern Love by German author Lord Schadt: A Translation and Adaptation.”

Leo Lensing thanked faculty members Krishna Winston, Uli Plass, Katja Straub, Angela Guliemetti, and Iris Bork-Goldfield for their many contributions to the department and its students.  Iris thanked Stefanie Schaffler for her excellent work as a Teaching Assistant.

 

Then it was time to barbecue, sample deviled eggs, stuffed breads, and the many different salads.

Leo Lensing and His Altenberg Collection in a Documentary Film

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On May 2, Leo Lensing attended a screening of A Little Pocket Mirror, a documentary on the Austrian writer Peter Altenberg (1859-1919), at the Neue Galerie in New York. The British art historian Gemma Blackshaw and the award-winning filmmaker David Bickerstaff collaborated on the project. Lensing is one of the consultants interviewed in the film, which includes footage of several objects from his collection of Altenberg’s manuscripts and inscribed photographs.

Kaffee and Kuchen – Study/Work abroad in German speaking countries

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The members of German house would like to share their study/work experiences in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and give you helpful tips about available program options and lifestyle abroad.

Elena Georgieva will talk about science programs in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland during and after graduation, as well as some work possibilities for science majors.

Nathan Shane will talk about studying music and German (and learning to cook!) while living in Leipzig, and how participating in such a different educational system gave him more perspective on his experience at Wesleyan.

Lana will talk about  the Wesleyan-Vanderbilt-Wheaton program in Regensburg which she did, and also about how one can take music and psychology classes that were counted towards her majors. Steffi, our exchange student from Regensburg also be there to answer any questions.

Our guest, Sara Lynch, who went to Berlin as part of the Duke in Berlin program will talk about her experience.

Frau Bork will also be there and answer any questions about Regensburg, the Duke in Berlin and the Columbia in Berlin programs.

The rest of the house members will be there to share our excitement with German culture and assist you with any other questions related to campus German life. Bring your questions, maybe laptops, and stomachs ready for cake!

Ulrich Plass on “Metaphysics and the Body”

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On April 13, Ulrich Plass presented a talk titled “Metaphysics and the Body: Adorno and Nietzsche on Living Rightly” at the Philosophy Department of the University of South Florida. His lecture compared Nietzsche’s philosophy of the body with Adorno’s attempts to ground an ethics of the good in somatic experience, i.e., in the spontaneous articulation of impulses.

Leo Lensing on Schnitzler’s Dreams

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Träume. Das Traumtagebuch 1875-1931, Leo Lensing’s edition of the dream journal of the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931), the author of  La Ronde, Fräulein Else and other classics of early twentieth-century German literature, was published by Wallstein Verlag (Göttingen) on March 6. Prepared together with Peter Michael Braunwarth to celebrate Schnitzler’s 150th birthday, the revised and expanded version of the dream texts originally included in his diaries can be read as an implicit challenge to Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.  Schnitzler’s Träume is both an “unconscious” autobiography of its author, whom Freud called his doppelgänger, and a dark, surreal reflection of the era between the final phase of the Habsburg Empire and the rise of fascism in the 1920s. His dreams are peopled not only by his family and famous Viennese contemporaries, including Freud, Mahler, Klimt, Karl Kraus and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, but also by Goethe, Mozart, Wagner, Emperor Franz Joseph, Kaiser Wilhelm, and even Marlene Dietrich.  An early review in the Viennese music journal Der neue Merker marveled over the “profound richness” of the dream texts and praised commentary and afterword as a “compendium of knowledge” about Schnitzler’s world. Träume was also featured on April 15 in “Ex libris,” a weekly program discussing new publications on ORF, Austrian National Radio.

GERMAN FILM FESTIVAL – (Re)imagining Post-Industrial Urbanity: Films of the Ruhr Area, Germany

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The German film festival will be held in Downey House 113 on April 13 and April 14, 2012. We will be showing three films from this large post-industrial area in western Germany. The first film, Bang Boom Bang by Peter Thorwart, will be shown on Friday at 7:00 p.m. The other two-Losers and Winners, a documentary by Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken, and Solino by Fatih Akin-will be screened on Saturday at 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., followed by a discussion. The introductory session by Sina Nitzsche, Visiting Assistant Professor of German at Oglethorpe University, and Kate Thorpe, Teagle Writing Fellow at Wesleyan will place these films in the context of the transformation through art and image-making that the region is experiencing.

The event is sponsored by the German Studies Department, Writing at Wesleyan, and the Goethe Institute Boston.

 

Wesleyan Students in Germany

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All five students have been studying with our Regensburg Program at Regensburg University, Germany since January 2012. Here you see them during a visit to Berlin in front of the German Reichstag in Berlin.

From left to right: Oscar Takabvirwa’14, Taylor Steele’14, Shu Zhang’13, Julius Bjornson’14, Afi Tettey-Fio’13

Newer and Newest German Cinema

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Film Studies & German Studies will continue their annual film series with Maren Ade’s comedy drama, Everyone Else (2009).

 “…watching the film is to watch the emergence of a very particular and potentially galvanic cinematic talent.”   – Glenn Kenney, The Los Angeles Times

Powell Family Cinema, CFS, Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 7 p.m.,

with an introduction by Katja Straub

Leo Lensing on Karl Kraus

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Leo Lensing contributed the article on Karl Kraus (1874-1936) to the Handbuch der Kunstzitate, a lexicon documenting allusions to painting, sculpture and photography in the work of more than two hundred German-language writers from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The “handbook,” edited by Konstanze Fliedl et al., is published in two volumes by De Gruyter.