GER 1528 
Vienna 1900

Looking at major political and cultural changes in one of the most fascinating cities of Europe, this course tells the tale of Vienna 1900 in the context of fin-de-siècle Europe and its metropoles, including Berlin, Paris, and London. The course uncovers the ways in which the past sheds light on the present, that is, on Europe of the twenty-first century, and the present illuminates the past. 

Vienna 1900, the flamboyant city of the music and art, was a major cultural center of Europe.  Here creativity was flourishing, prompting the intellectual avant-garde to discover new border zones of science, philosophy, and art.  Wittgenstein conceived his path-breaking theories of language; Freud uncovered substructures of the human psyche, while  Schönberg developed the twelve-tone music, and Kraus wrote his superb polemics against journalists and politicians.  Viennese intellectuals, philosophers, artists, and writers anticipated the most crucial issues, concerns, and debates of our time, providing answers to seminal questions that re-emerged at the turn of a new century. 

Today Vienna is a gateway to Eastern Europe; it is a city in which 150 different nationalities coexist relatively peacefully.  Vienna  is well aware of its past and strives to become once again a leading cultural capital of Europe.  In its efforts to redefine its place in a United Europe, modern Vienna 2000 builds bridges between East and West, turning itself into the Center of Central Europe.  

Through documentary and feature films as well as slide shows this multi-media course introduces students to the multifaceted turn of the century European culture in its relation to the present time.  The course focuses on European history, politics, philosophy, art, music and literature, giving special attention to  major Viennese figures, including  Kraus, Klimt, Loos, Schönberg, Freud, and Schnitzler.  The course also features a series of guest lecturers from the University of Pittsburgh and from abroad.

The course is for undergraduate students in the humanities, including Foreign Languages and Literatures, History, Philosophy, Art History, Religion, Jewish Studies, CWES, and REES. It helps meet FAS  requirements.  

Are you ready for a virtual tour of European intellectual history? I am planning to teach this course in the Honors College, fall 2007.  Are you ready for the challenge?  Students who finish the class with a straight A or A+ will be recommended for a Pitt. grant such as the Austrian Nationality Room Fellowship or an outside Pitt. grant that makes studying in Vienna or another Austrian city possible.

GER 1051 
Introduction to Literary Analysis 

In this first-level literature/culture seminar for German majors, students will read examples from each of the literary genres (poetry, prose, and drama) and learn about the fascinating ways in which major German poets and writers used these genres to express their visions and ideas. In addition, we will learn the characteristics of each genre, the vocabulary used to discuss them, and different interpretative approaches to the analysis of literary works. There will be a conscious attempt to build upon and expand the reading techniques and strategies introduced in German 1000, as well as to prepare students for the advanced-level literature/culture seminars. Works will be chosen from different literary epochs and authors, ranging from the 18th century to the present. It is hard to interpret and understand literature without knowing the basics taught in this class. I offer this course in the fall term 2007.

GER 1328
Novelle 

This course introduces students to a fascinating and highly developed genre. The course traces the "Novelle" from its classical and romantic origins to its realist and modern transformations. The term novella signals a novelty, and the "Novellen" analyzed in this course are indeed novelties, for they describe new themes in world literature and explore new modes of artistic expressions. We will discuss texts by Tieck, Kleist, Keller, Storm, Droste-Hülshoff, Thomas Mann, and Kafka.

GER 1234
Modernism in Literature and Culture 1890-1918

Emerging in Europe at the turn of the century, the concept of "modernism" has fascinated readers, has challenged their notions of literary "periods," and has prompted them to explore the historical, philosophical, and social implications of new intellectual and artistic movements around 1900. The present course is an introduction into German modernist intellectual and literary traditions within the context of European thought, focusing on a mysterious theme that runs through world literature, leaving a deep imprint upon fin-de-siècle German writing: It is the transference of secrets, the impact of a person's hidden deed on the behaviour of another who knows nothing of the secret time, but acts as if he or she has known it all along. These secrets burden, haunt, and torment the other, prompting him or her into violence and murder. 

By studying the psychoanalytical, social, political, literary, and cultural implications of this motif, the class will investigate different aspects of the literary period associated with the term "modernism" and explore its historical development within European literature. Through class discussions and oral presentations we will analyze works by modernist writers such as Franz Werfel, Arthur Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. 

 FOR PITT. EVALUATIONS OF TEACHING, SEE  

 GER 2990/3900 
Money, Beauty, and Seduction: 
 Psychograph of the Century in European Culture

Tracing the genealogy of a spellbinding century in European culture from 1850s to Post World War II, this course focuses on crucial artistic and literary innovations within the context of a radically changing political, social, and economic setting.

The course opens with a discussion of the unusual development of two famous European Jewelry Houses, Mauboussin and Fabergé, that had a substantial impact not only on artistic movements (i.e. Art Nouveau and Art Deco), but also on political and economic developments. Georges Mauboussin was an innovative artist and smart business man who shaped economic policies in France, when he became  “Conseiller du Commerce Extérieur de la France” (1923-1933).  Carl Fabergé, the court Jeweler to the Tsars Alexander IV and Nikolai II, established an innovative business structure which became a model for his contemporaries. The history of these two Jewelry Houses discloses the dynamics of money, beauty, and seduction at work in society as well as in the arts and literature. Time and again, revolutionary writers and poets such as Honoré de Balzac, Guy de Maupassant, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Adalbert Stifter, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, Oscar Wilde, Tolkin, and many other have invoked this fascinating dynamics in order to disclose their critique of a society marked by profound discrepancies: the contrast between a wealthy minority infatuated with money, luxury, and beauty versus an impoverished working class majority struggling to survive; the fascination with the beauty of the female body versus the suppression of women’s rights; the longing for continuity versus the desire to break with all traditions. Like jewelers who trust the power of precious stones, writers believed in the power of language as their means to uncover injustice, corruption, and the abuse of political positions. Words were their weapons to fight against violence and wars. By studying the ways in which Maupassant, Dostojewski, Wilde, Tolkin, Hoffmann, Rilke, Stefan George and many other key authors read and misread the contradictions of their time, the course will give students an insight into a century in European culture.

Students from foreign languages taking this class will be required to read these texts in the original. The language of the course will be English. Translations into English will be made available to students who cannot read the original.

This is a Cultural Studies Core Course.

GER 2808/3808

Decadence and Fin de Siècle 
Germany at the Turn of the Century (1900)  

Through class presentations and discussions, this seminar analyzes key issues in fin-de-siècle German writing, including concepts of modernism, decadence, and the image of femme fatale.  The seminar focuses on the crisis of modern artistic expression prevalent in the literature, philosophy, and art of that time. Schnitzler, Freud, Kraus, Hofmannsthal, Trakl, Lasker-Schüler, Thomas und Heinrich Mann, George, Kolmar are among the authors discussed in this graduate course.  

GERMAN 2702/3702

1). Jewish Writers in German Literature

"Auf daß die Verfolgten nicht Verfolger werden," the title of a key poem by Nelly Sachs, Nobel Prize Winner for literature, who called upon the persecuted not to turn into persecutors could be the motto of this seminar.  In this course, I attempt to teach a culture of humaneness and peace via the writings of authors who were victims of persecution, violence, and war. The first part of this seminar is devoted to teaching Shoah poetry and prose writings. Among the authors discussed in this course are Paul Celan; the poets from his cultural background, the Bukovina; Nelly Sachs; Edgar Hilsenrath; and Jurek Becker whose novel Jacob, the Liar has become the basis of one of the most interesting movies invoking the Shoah. The second part of the class focuses on other aspects of the intricate interrelations between writers of Jewish descent and their German-speaking contextuality. Walter Benjamin's Illuminations, Franz Kafka's The Trial, and S. Freud's Civilization and its Discontent are among the texts analyzed in this class.

 
 2)  DOUBLE OUTCASTS: 
German Jewish Women Authors in the Age of Modernity 

The life and work of Jewish women from Rahel Varnhagen to Hannah Arendt bears the stigma of a double bind. It is a bind which deeply affected not only the development of Jewish feminist movements in German speaking countries, but also German-Jewish intellectual history, literature, and philosophy.

In the Age of Enlightenment, when the gates of the ghettos were slowly opened and Jews in German-speaking areas were given the opportunity to integrate into surrounding societies, Jewish women, struggling to evade the restrictions imposed upon females in Orthodox Judaism, embraced the liberal German culture of their time, but internalized dominant anti-Semitic prejudices. It was only within their salons that Varnhagen and Arnstein succeeded in softening the painful effects of their double bind; for the salon constituted a kind of micro-society in which all stereotypical differences between genders as well as between Jews and non-Jews were overcome.

As time passed, the set changed, and so did the actors, but the problems remained. While Jewish women became increasingly integrated into society and played a crucial part in its development, the phantom of being double outcasts still haunted them. Through an analysis of texts by Alice Salomon, Rosa Luxemburg, Bertha Pappenheim, Else Lasker-Schüler, Nelly Sachs, Gertrud Kolmar, and other German-Jewish women authors, this seminar explores their diverse attempts to cope with a double identity crisis, internalized prejudices, as well as changing social rules. It discusses the impact of their double bind upon the development of feminist movements in German-speaking countries as well as upon German-Jewish intellectual history, philosophy, and literature. 

German 2865/34524
Multiculturalism in Contemporary German Literature

Contemporary German Literature produced a generation of writers and poets who came from different countries, settled in Germany, fell in love with the German language, and wrote their poetic texts in German. Their "angelernte Muttersprache" (learned German mother tongue), as Elias Canetti put it, became their source of inspiration as well as a motor of poetic innovation. Among the authors to be discussed in this class are Edgar Hilsenrath, Ruth Klüger, Herta Müller, Emine Özdamar, Sten Nadolny, Paul Nizon, Yoko Tawada, as well as native German poets who inscribe in their works their interpretations of foreign cultures and their notions of otherness. 

Through lectures, readings, and discussions, this seminar explores these authors' poetic endeavors, focusing on several major themes of their works: the preconditions for the peaceful coexistence among different cultures and its opposite: violence, war, and hatred; different concepts of identity in their relationship to heterogeneous notions of multicultural societies; images of otherness; attempts to "translate" different cultures into one's own world of thought, and the impossibility of such a "translation."

FOR PITT. EVALUATIONS OF TEACHING, SEE