Iris Bork-Goldfield
Asian German Film Series
These contemporary German productions represent diasporic characters of Central, West, South, Southeast, and East Asian descent in a variety of genres and intersecting themes including stereotypes, gender, generation, mixed race identity, class, disability, and more.
Trailers
(1) Get Up (Steh auf!), a 2019 short drama, directed by Seung-Hyun Chong. Taeshik, a German-born 26-year-old of Korean descent is torn between his Korean upbringing and his life in Germany. (2) Fruits & Vegetables (Obst und Gemüse), a 2017 short comedy-drama by Vietnamese director Duc Ngo Ngoc. At first glance, the Vietnamese greengrocer and his employee, who is as attached to the Berlin soccer team FC Union as he is to alcohol, have little in common. At second glance…
Tschick (Goodbye Berlin), a 2016 coming of age film, directed by Fatih Akin, based on Wolfgang Herrndorf’s bestselling novel Tschick. The film depicts two teenage outsiders from Berlin who steal a car and go on an eccentric roadtrip through Germany that will probably change their lives.
My Blind Date with Life (Mein Blind Date mit dem Leben), a 2017 biopic, directed by Marc Rothemund, based on the autobiographical book by Saliya Kahawatte. An ambitious young man struggles to achieve his dream of becoming an employee in a Munich luxury hotel despite being strongly visually impaired.
Semi-Detached (Doppelhaushälfte), a 2022 German TV comedy series. A family moves from hip Berlin to a semi-detached house in the idyllic countryside and gets to know their very different neighbors…
Online German 101 Superintensive with the Goethe-Institut
- January 2-9: Preparatory asynchronous modules to be completed
- January 10-23: Mondays-Saturdays 10am-11:30am (Eastern Time)
- January 25: Final Exam
This 3-week superintensive online course allows students who were not able to attend GRST 101 this fall, to enroll in GRST 102 this spring. German 101 Superintensive is an introduction to German and leads to communicative competence in German by building on the four primary skills–speaking, listening, reading, and writing–while developing participants’ awareness of life and culture of German-speaking countries.
The German language opens vistas into a world of ideas that is as complex as it is elemental. It provides access to many fields, from philosophy to the natural sciences and many disciplines between: history, musicology, art history, and environmental studies. The course sequence 101/102/211 prepares students to study abroad in Germany, on one of the two Wesleyan-approved programs in Berlin and Hamburg or continue with GRST212 here at Wesleyan.
The cost of this non-credit course, offered by the Goethe-Institut – worldwide leader in German Language education – is $1350 but offered to all members of the Wesleyan community at a 20% discount. Registration is open through December 23 by emailing germancourses-boston@goethe.de. Learn more about the Goethe-Institut online. Students with additional questions are welcome to contact Professor Bork-Goldfield in Wesleyan’s German Studies Department.
Distinguished GRST and COL major Mark H. Gelber ’72 on China, Judaism, and Franz Kafka
Mark Gelber spent his academic career at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, retiring a few years ago. Before giving his talk at Wesleyan, Mark will deliver the keynote address at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Nov. 15-16 international conference on Ruth Klüger, which he co-organized.
Martin Bäumel: Creating Attention: Poetry, Form, and the Observing Self, 1680-1750
October 17th @ 6pm at Daniel Family Commons
This talk explores the medial and communicative conditions of the (German) Enlightenment creation of the modern observing self, broadly defined as a self that encounters the world both rationally and sensually and has to account for the validity of its cognition without recourse to something outside itself. It contends that lyric poetry is at the forefront of attempts to practice and theorize this human world encounter. In an investigation spanning roughly the first half of the eighteenth century, it explores the connection between poetic speech and philosophical attempts to understand and evaluate processes of cognition as well as the incorporation of an observing self into a larger social whole. In particular, it shows how an increasing use of poetic mediality profoundly shapes what humans can pay attention to, and how they can account for the accuracy of an observation that can never be observed in the moment of cognition.
A Historical Walking Tour through Hamburg-Blankenese
Wesleyan students Miles Cohen ‘23, Anna Tjeltveit ‘23, Josh DuBois ‘23, and Thoma Mitsuya ’23, who have been studying at Hamburg University with the Smith-Hamburg program since March 2022, joined Professor Bork on a historical walking tour through Blankenese, a suburb of Hamburg. They arrived at the S-Bahn station, built in 1867 
and located next to Erik Blumenfeld Platz. The location was named after Erik Blumenfeld (1915-1997). As the son of a Jewish father and Danish mother, he was deported to Auschwitz in 1943. Luckily, he survived this death camp and returned to Hamburg. He became a German politician in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the German Bundestag, and the European Parliament.
During the tour, we passed Prof. Bork’s great-grandparents’ former house. Two Stolpersteine remind the passers-by of their deportation to and death in Theresienstadt.
Near the local market, a memorial stone reminds us of eight young men from Blankenese who participated in the 1848 uprising of Schleswig-Holstein. In 1640, Blankenese had become part of the Duchy of Holstein, which was then reigned over by Danish kings for more than 200 years. In the mid-19th century, it was briefly ruled over by Austria, then by Prussia, and since 1938, Blankenese has been a district of Hamburg.
We continued our walk by then visiting the Hessepark. It is named after George Heinrich Hesse (1785-1861), who was one of the founders of the German Commerzbank. Before him, around 1800, Mr. and Mrs. Klünder lived in what became the Hessepark. Friederike Klünder introduced smallpox vaccination in Blankenese and the surrounding villages by personally vaccinating 2,168 children and adults against the disease.
We then entered the “Treppenviertel” (staircase quarter), with its over 5,000 steps, and descended 150 steps to the river
Elbe on the Strandtreppe. At the bottom is the well-known Strandhotel famous for its two reliefs featuring Hermann and Dorothea from Goethe’s novel of the same title.
Our one-hour long tour continued through Baurs Park, named after the businessman Georg Friedrich Baur (1768-1865), whose manor house was built by the famous Danish architect, Hansen (1756-1845).
Not far from this beautiful park, our tour ended with “Kaffee und Kuchen” on Prof. Bork’s balcony. Miles was exhausted and rested in the Strandkorb.
Wesleyan Students in Hamburg-Blankenese
Jenna Lacey ’21 has been studying at the University of Tübingen since fall 2021. She is pursuing a MA in Public Policy and Social Change. This is a two-year program. She recently received a DAAD scholarship to finance her second year of study.
During her spring break she visited Professor Bork in Hamburg. They took the ferry from Blankenese to Landungsbrücken and visited the Elbphilharmonie, as well as many other interesting sites.
One evening Miles ’23 and Anna ’23 joined them to learn how to cook asparagus. In Germany asparagus is white and needs to be peeled—a painstaking process that is not for the faint of heart.
