…
Join us for another Kaffeestunde
in the German House at 65 Lawn Avenue
Friday, October 26 from 5-6:30 p.m.
Talk German while enjoying a cup of coffee and some cake.
…
Month: October 2012
EXHIBITION OPENING RECEPTION AND TALK
SAVED FROM EUROPE: THE KALLIR FAMILY COLLECTION OF AUSTRIAN AND GERMAN LITERATURE
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012 — 4:30 – 6:00 PM
SMITH READING ROOM, OLIN MEMORIAL LIBRARY
252 CHURCH STREET, MIDDLETOWN
In 1939, the Austrian art-dealer and publisher Otto Kallir fled war-torn Europe, bringing with him to New York his irreplaceable art and book collections. In New York, he started his life over, establishing a new art gallery (the Galerie St. Etienne, still operating today), a publishing house (the Johannes Presse), and becoming one of the central figures in circles of Austrian émigrés in the U.S., maintaining his many contacts to leading artistic and literary figures of his day. The Kallir family has generously donated Otto Kallir’s book collection of Austrian and German literature to Wesleyan University, highlights of which are on display in Olin Library from October 19 to November 27, 2012. The collection features first editions, signed copies, books inscribed to Kallir and his wife, fine press books, several unique manuscript items, and more. An opening reception will be held on Wednesday, October 24, from 4:30-6pm, with remarks by John Kallir (Otto Kallir’s son), and a short talk about the collection by Wesleyan Associate Professor of German Studies Ulrich Plass. The event is free and open to the public.
SPONSORED BY
The German Department, Olin Memorial Library, Special Collections & Archives, and the Friends of the Library
German Conversation
Komm zur deutschen Quasselstunde und sprich deutsch!
Freitag, den 19. Oktober von 13-14 Uhr in Fisk 404.
Thema der Woche: “Hör doch mal zu!”
Uli Plass & Iris Bork-Goldfield
GERMAN STUDIES OPEN HOUSE
Interested in becoming a GERMAN STUDIES major or minor?
Want to learn more about the GRST department and studying in Germany?
Come and join us at our Open House on Wednesday, October 17 at 4:30p.m. in FIsk 404.
Encore Performance of Schnitzler’s Dreams at the Berliner Ensemble
On October 14, actors from the Berliner Ensemble, the theater founded by Bertolt Brecht, will stage a second dramatic reading of Leo Lensing’s edition of Schnitzler’s Träume, co-edited with Peter Michael Braunwarth and published by Wallstein Verlag. The first performance was given on June 24 to a full house.
Since its publication in March, which was followed by a second printing in June, Träume has elicited an unexpectedly wide and positive response in the Austrian and German media. ORF TV (Austrian National Television) presented a feature on the book in the evening news on May 6; and Austrian Public Radio included a review a month earlier in “Ex libris,” a weekly program discussing new books. Deutschlandfunk, Deutschland Radio and Westdeutscher Rundfunk, three of Germany’s most prominent public radio stations, broadcast extensive reviews; Deutschlandfunk also named Träume “Book of the Week” on May 15 (Schnitzler’s birthday). The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published a full-page excerpt from the book in its Sunday edition in February and followed up with a very positive review and the designation as one of five “Books of the Week” on May 14. The reviewer for the prestigious Arts pages of the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich) called Träume “the most fascinating new book of the season,” and Die Welt (Berlin) published a two-page spread that combined a review with lengthy excerpts. Austrian Public Radio included the book on its May “Bestenliste,” the ten best books of the month; and Southwest German Broadcasting (SWR) followed suit by naming it number 5 on its own list of the ten Best Books for July and August. Most recently, reviews appeared in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Times Literary Supplement.
The Social Individual
Several German authors, works and themes will be presented at this year’s annual conference of the Northeastern American Society for 18th Century at Wesleyan University on October 12 and 13.
Friday, 12 — 9:00 – 10:30 a.m.
The Imagination and Sociability in German Literature …………………………………………………………… Wyllys 115
Chair: David Pugh (Queen’s University)
Andrea Speltz (University of Guelph):“Imaginative Compassion in Christoph Martin Wieland’s Die Geschichte des Agathon”
Paola Mayer (University of Guelph): “Einbildungskraft as Creator of Einbildung: E.T.A. Hoffman’s Die Räuber”
Dennis Mahoney (University of Vermont): “Joseph von Eichendorff and the Domestication of the Romantic Imagination”
Edward Larkin (University of New Hampshire): “Imagining the Social Individual: C.W. Frölich’s Über den Menschen und seine Verhältnisse”
Friday, 12 — 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Open Panel on Enlightenment Philosophy …………………………………………………………… Usdan 108
Chair: Lucy Guenova (Wesleyan University)
James J. Caudle (Yale University): “‘Sociability and other Cruel Sports’: James Boswell Among The Soaping Club and The Criticks”
Charlotte M. Craig (Rutgers University): “Ambivalent Traits in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Image: Enlightener, National Author, Patriot, Cosmopolitan, Freemason”
Michael Printy (Wesleyan University): “‘Revolutions of the Spirit’: The Protestant Enlightenment and the Rise of German Philosophy”
Catherine Keohane (Montclair State University): “Seeing Oneself in(stead of) the Poor: Charity and Imaginative Substitution”
Satuday, 13 — 10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Sense and Sociability in France and Germany …………………………………………………………… Wyllys 110
Chair: Edward Larkin (University of New Hampshire)
Masano Yamashita (University of Colorado): “Enlightenment Conceptions of Commonality: French Questionings of the Public Nature of Aesthetics”
David Pugh (Queen’s University): “Social Anxieties in German Asthetics”
Mark Ilsemann (University of Virginia): “‘Everyone has […] Their Own Way of Seeing’: The Science of Optics (and its Metaphors) in Georg Forster’s Anthropology”
Satuday, 13 — 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Genius ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Wyllys 112
Chair: Ulrich Plass (Wesleyan University)
Sarah Eron (University of Rhode Island): “Fielding’s Muse: Inspiration, Genius, and the Dialogic Novel”
Amelia Bitely (University at Buffalo): “‘His name consenting crowds repeat’: The Exhortations and Praise of Genii Loci”
Lorraine Piroux (Rutgers University): “Imagining the Social Genius: Possession and Self-‐Possession in Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comedien”
Joseph Drury (Villanova University): “The Machine in the Ghost: Ann Radcliffe’s Music”