Core Courses

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Sample Program of Study for German Studies Majors

Core Courses

• German 106: Beginning German Intensive

   
  
  Beginning German Intensive is designed to enable students with little or no previous experience in German to complete three semesters of college German within five months: spring semester at Bard, plus four weeks in the summer at Bard College Berlin (upon successful completion carrying four additional credits). Students will take eight class hours per week during the semester at Bard, plus a weekly conversation meeting with the German language tutor. The communicative approach actively involves students from day one in this class. As the course progresses, the transition is made from learning the language for everyday communication to the reading and discussion of classical and modern texts (such as Goethe, Heine, Kafka, Brecht) as well as of music and film. The concluding four weeks of the program will be spent at Bard’s sister campus in Berlin: Students will further explore German language and culture in a twenty hours per week course, which is accompanied by guided tours introducing participants to Berlin’s intriguing history, architecture, and vibrant cultural life. Students interested in this class must consult with Profs Thomas Wild or Stephanie Kufner before online-registration. (Need-based financial aid for the Berlin section of the course is available; please discuss further details with instructors.) 
   

• German 200: Accelerated Transitional German

   

  This course is for students with varied backgrounds in German whose proficiency is on the A2-B1 level. Emphasis will be placed on a complete review of elementary grammar (A1-A2), and the sharpening of all four language skills (speaking, comprehension, reading, writing) as well as cultural proficiency. Extensive reading, speaking and vocabulary training exercises in class as well as at home will be combined with conversational practice, reading and dramatization of short classical and modern German texts, and weekly writing of simiple compositions. Successful completion of this accelerated course (covering 3 semesters worth of material) will allow students to continue with German 202 in the Spring of 2020. Students interested in this class must consult with Prof. Kufner before on-line registration.

• German 202: Intermediate German II

   

  
  For students who have completed three semesters of college German (or equivalent). The course is designed to deepen the proficiency gained in the courses up to GER 201 by increasing students’ fluency in speaking, reading, and writing, and adding significantly to their working vocabulary. Students improve their ability to express their own ideas and hone their strategies for understanding spoken and written communication. Selected 20th-century literary texts and audiovisual materials, including a contemporary award-winning novel by Barbara Honigmann.
   

• German 300: German Theater Between Moral Institution and Participatory Happening

   
  This course examines German theater of the 20th and 21st century from Expressionism to contemporary post-dramatic forms of performance and participatory theater. After an overview of pivotal moments in the history and poetics of German theater (Lessing, Schiller, Hauptmann), students will engage in analyzing specific developments in modern and contemporary theater. Among others, we will explore the new aesthetics of expressionist theater and Max Reinhardt’s work at the Deutsche Theater, Bertolt Brecht’s development of the Epic Theater before and during World War II, post-war efforts to stage Vergangenheitbewältigung (“coming to terms with the past” of the Third Reich and the Holocaust), e.g., with politically engaged documentary pieces, up to the voicing of contemporary  and multicultural experiences in re-unified Germany not only on but also off theater stages, thereby calling into question traditional ways of viewing as well as the role of the institution theater in Germany today. – Readings include: Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening (1891/1906);  Bertolt Brecht.  The Threepenny Opera (1928); Mother Courage and Her Children (1939); Wolfgang Borchert. The Man Outside (1947); Peter Weiss. The Investigation (1965); Botho Strauss. Gross und Klein (1978); Gesine Schmidt. liebesrap (2014);  Nurkan Erpulat/Jens Hillje, Verrücktes Blut (2010/2015).  (A Reader with a collection of traditional as well as contemporary poetics of theater and theater reviews will be provided). Viewing and analysis of videotaped productions on 4 Mondays of the semester will be a mandatory part of the class.   For students who have completed German 202 or the equivalent. Includes review and expansion of German grammar.

• German 303: Grimms Marchen: Once Upon A Time; The Folktales of the Brothers Grimm

   
  
  “Enchanting, brimming with wonder and magic, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm are the special stories of childhood that stay with us throughout our lives,” writes translator and Grimm scholar Jack Zipes. Unfortunately, we seem to know these tales only in adaptations that greatly reduce their power to touch our emotions and engage our imaginations. Through a close reading of selected tales, with emphasis on language, plot, motif, and image, this course explores not only the tales’ poetics and politics but also their origins in the oral tradition, in folklore and myth. The course considers major critical approaches (e.g., Freudian, Marxist, feminist) and conducts a contrastive analysis of creative adaptations (Disney, classical ballet, postmodern dance) and other fairy-tale traditions (Perrault, Straparola, Arabian Nights). Creative and critical writing assignments. Conducted in German. First year students should consult with Prof. Kempf for eligibility.
  
  

• German 308: German through Film

   
  
  This interdisciplinary course explores 100 years of German history, language and culture through the lens of contemporary German film. Films, documentaries, essays, poetry, and manifestos, will provide us with a road map through the century between World War I and Germany after reunification. Beginning with the Kinodebatte (1909-1929) of writers, theater directors, and critics in the early twentieth century on the poetics of film, we will discuss the role and responsibility of new media, examining literary, artistic, and cinematic representations of cultural, social and political issues in Germany between 1909 and 2012 - from the time of silent movies to the digital age. Directors and writers include: Fassbinder, Wenders, Fatih Akin, Elmar Fischer, Hofmannsthal, Dblin, Tucholsky. and Enzensberger. For students who have completed German 202 or the equivalent. Review and expansion of German grammar. 
  
  

• German 314: Life and Other Dreams

   
  There is waking life, and then there is another "stage" on which dreams take place, as Sigmund Freud memorably wrote in The Interpretation of Dreams. In this course, we will read influential and compelling dream narratives, with a focus on German-language literature and culture. How are dreams narrated, and how is their relation to the rest of life conceived? What is the logic of dreams according to Freud, and how does Freud interpret dreams? We will consider the role of language in both the representation and analysis of dreams. As a counterpoint, we will read troubling scenes of awakening in order to advance our own "Interpretation of Waking Up". Texts we will read include Genesis 37-45, Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, Kafka's notebooks, Adorno's Dream Notes, selections from Mann's Magic Mountain, and Walter Benjamin's Berlin Childhood around 1900. Films by Herzog and Hitchcock. Students will work regularly on creative and critical writing assignments in order to gain confidence and skill in writing in German. Conversations in class will be oriented toward making the transition from Intermediate II or the equivalent to the 300-level, while the course is also appropriate for students who have already taken a 300-level course. Taught in German. Review and expansion of German grammar and vocabulary.

• German 320: Modern German Prose

   
  
  A survey of great works of mainly twentieth-century prose, including Novellen, Erzhlungen, parables and other short forms. Detailed literary analysis will be combined with the discussion of the social, political and historical contexts of each work and interspersed with frequent creative writing assigments. Readings to include E.T.A. Hoffmann, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Robert Walser, Heinrich von Kleist, Walter Benjamin, Ingeborg Bachmann, Max Frisch, Friedrich Drrenmatt, Ilse Aichinger, Peter Handke, Thomas Bernhard, Jenny Erpenbeck, Yoko Tawada and others.
   

• German 325: German Theater Between Moral Institution and Participatory Happening

   
  This course examines German theater of the 20^th and 21^st century from Expressionism to contemporary post-dramatic forms of performance and participatory theater. After an overview of pivotal moments in the history and poetics of German theater (Lessing, Schiller, Hauptmann), students will engage in analyzing specific developments in modern and contemporary theater. Among others, we will explore the new aesthetics of expressionist theater and Max Reinhardt’s work at the Deutsche Theater, Bertolt Brecht’s development of the Epic Theater before and during World War II, post-war efforts to stage Vergangenheitbewältigung (“coming to terms with the past” of the Third Reich and the Holocaust), e.g., with politically engaged documentary pieces, up to the voicing of contemporary  and multicultural experiences in re-unified Germany not only on but also off theater stages, thereby calling into question traditional ways of viewing as well as the role of the institution theater in Germany today. –Readings include full texts or excerpts from: Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening (1895/1906);  Bertolt Brecht The Three Penny Opera (1928); Wolfgang Borchert. The Man Outside (1947); Peter Weiss. The Investigation (1965); Botho Strauss. Gross und Klein (1978); Gesine Schmidt. Der Kick  (2005);  Nurkan Erpulat/Jens Hillje, Verrücktes Blut (2010/2015).  (A Reader with a collection of traditional as well as contemporary poetics of theater and theater reviews will be provided). Viewing and analysis of videotaped productions on 4 Mondays of the semester will be a mandatory part of the class. Conducted in German.
   

• German 331: Poetry and Philosophy

   
  
  Is there something like a sensory reasoning? Who has the capacity to formulate the unspeakable? How can we address— with words— the crisis of language? Is humor a thought or a sentiment? Poetry and philosophy have for centuries offered fascinating responses to such questions— not least in the German tradition. Poets, philosophers, and poetic thinkers—from Goethe, Kant, and Schiller, to Hölderlin, Heidegger, and Rilke, or from Heine, Nietzsche, and Kafka, to writers of the Avant-Garde, and on to Benjamin, Brecht, and Arendt—have all had something to say on these questions. The beauty and precision of their language(s) will foster our analytical vocabulary and will (we hope!) inspire ambitious and playful writing experiments and provoke a semester of joyful conversations with these thinkers of and in the German language.
   

• German 400: German Expressionism

   
  Less a style than a Weltanschauung of a rebellious generation, German Expressionism – flourishing roughly between 1905 and 1925 – is generally seen as an artistic reflection of a common feeling of crisis whose origins can be sought, for instance, in the loss of a cohesive world view, especially in the wake of Nietzsche's pessimistic diagnosis; the disappearance of individualism in burgeoning urban centers; the hypocrisy of Imperial Wilhelminian Germany; the soulless materialism and the (self-) alienation of increased industrialization; and the collapse of Newtonian science. Readings will include works by Frank Wedekind, Gottfried Benn, Georg Heym, Else Lasker-Schüler, Kafka, Georg Kaiser, and Georg Trakl. Since Expressionism involved not just literature but painting, music, and film, we will also consider works by the Brücke- and Blaue Reiter-associations of painters, Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck, and films such as Der letzteMann, M, and Die Büchse der Pandora.
  
   

• German 405: Exit Metaphysics-Enter Sauerkraut: Nineteenth-Century German Literature

   
  
  "Exit Metaphysics, enter Sauerkraut" is the phrase frequently used to describe the development of nineteenth-century German literature from "Romanticism" to "Naturalism". The phrase also alludes to the overwhelming experience shared by the majority of intellectuals and writers at that time: the awareness of the loss of security that idealistic philosophy had provided and the attempt to find new absolutes. We will investigate the evolution and the various facets of this experience as it manifests itself in literature through a close reading of selected works (novels, novellas, poems, and plays) by Grillparzer, Nestroy, Grabbe, Hebbel, Heine, Morike, Droste-Hulshoff, Keller, Stifler, C.F. Meyer, Fontane, Schnitzler, Wedekind, Hauptmann.
   

• German 421: The Experience of the Foreign in German Literature

   
  
  This course will examine representations of foreignness in modern German literature and opera (e.g., Lessing, Mozart, Novalis, Heine, Kafka, Frisch), in contemporary films (Hark Bohm, R.W. Fassbinder, Fatih Akin), and in works of nonnative Germans writing in Germany today (Yoko Tawada, Aras Ören, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Rafik Schami).  Attempting to combine aesthetic appreciation with cultural critique, the course will focus on issues such as multiculturalism, homogeneity, and xenophobia.  Its goal is to enable students to approach cultural difference, in Claire Kramsch's words, "in a spirit of ethnographic inquiry rather than in a normative or judgmental way."
   

• German 422: Contemporary German Literature and Film

   
  
  What is at stake for contemporary German writers, filmmakers, and intellectuals? What topics do they address in their movies and documentaries, which problems do they discuss in their novels, poems, and plays? How do these artworks reflect Germany's multi-ethnic society and its pivotal role in a rapidly changing Europe? During the Cold War, the country had been divided between East and West for forty years – how present is this past in contemporary Germany, twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989? Has ‘1989’ changed the modes of writing? The basis for our discussion of these questions will be texts by major contemporary writers such as German Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, W.G. Sebald, Ingo Schulze, Terézia Mora, Irina Liebmann, Emine Sevgy Özdamar, Tankred Dorst, or Uwe Kolbe. We will examine distinguished feature films, such as Fatih Akin's Head On, Hans-Christian Schmid’s Lichter, and Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, as well as outstanding documentaries, among them The Wall, and Der Kick. Our analysis of literary texts and films will be complemented by close readings of theoretical writings by the respective artists as well as contemporary criticism. Taught in German. 
  
  

• German 426: Kleist's Works

   
  This seminar is dedicated to the works and worlds of Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), one of the most fascinating and thought-provoking writers of German literature. We will discuss a core selection of his plays (Amphitryon, Penthesilea, Der zerbrochene Krug), prose works (Marquise von O., Michael Kohlhaas), and essays (Marionettentheater).

• German 428: Baroque Mourning & Melancholy:Text and Image

   
  The German Baroque is perhaps best known for the presence of mourning and melancholy in its literary texts. Writers in 17th-century Germany inherited and transmitted Medieval and Renaissance theories of affect during a time of political and religious tumult as they developed a new literary language. 20th-century readers of Walter Benjamin's decisive study, The Origin of the German Mourning Play, have looked to the Baroque as a primal scene of modernity. Yet few readers of Benjamin have read his sources, while Baroque specialists have tended not to take "theory" into account. In this course we will read key poems and plays from the German Baroque period in dialogue with passages from Benjamin's study. We will attempt to define the concepts of mourning and melancholy for ourselves, and in doing so consider associated concepts in the Baroque/Benjamin constellation: the sovereign, the doctrine of Saturn, and allegory. In lyric poetry, we will consider the themes of transience and vanity. We will then turn to visual art, and study Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I together with Panofsky and Saxl's important essay on this work. Finally, we will read W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, in order to reflect on the traces left by the Baroque in late 20th century literature. Authors we will read include Gryphius, Lohenstein, Tscherning, Luther, Benjamin, Panofsky, and Sebald. Taught in German.

• German 467: Correspondences: Figures of Writing

   
  
  One alone is always wrong; but with two involved, the truth begins, reads an aphorism by Friedrich Nietzsche. His criticism of the isolated genius thinker also proposes an alternative mode of thinking and writing: creative collaboration. The seminar will explore several instances of such creative collaborations, e.g. Hannah Arendt and Hilde Domin, Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin, Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. These intellectual relationships are also documented in letter exchanges, so that our seminar will unfold the word correspondence in a literal and in a figurative way. In this sense, Correspondence exceeds the limits of a single literary text or a letter; its dynamics translates into poems, novels, essays, or theoretical writings. As a consequence, fundamental categories such as authorship, work, intertextuality, or addressing are called into question. Our seminar will continuously reflect upon those terms based on canonical writings of modern literary criticism, including Benjamin, and (to be read in English) Genette, Barthes, Foucault, Lvinas. The course intends to incorporate materials of the Hannah Arendt Library special collection at Bard College in order to explore some of the unknown intellectual relationships between the pivotal political thinker and German as well as American writers.