German 194-01/
Berlin: Imperial Capital, Metropolis, and Divided City

Monday-Wednesday-Friday 1:10-2:10 / Humanities 215

Rachael Huener, Ph.D.
German Studies & Russian
Macalester College
huener@macalester.edu

Course Writing Assistant: Rachel Firgens, '07
rfirgens@macalester.edu

link to Syllabus
link to Ressources

Course Description

Cities are places of cultural concentration. Modern world-class cities like Berlin have historically been showcases of national identity, models of modernity, home to the most diverse elements in a given culture, and places of experimentation and excess in the arts, in society, and in individual lives. Few modern metropolises have experienced the radical change of the Weltstadt Berlin, as it became the imperial capital of the German Empire in 1871, the center of the European avant-garde in the 1920s, and the most well-known symbol of the Cold War as the ruptured, walled city of the post-World War II era.

This course will examine the city of Berlin in three epochs: the last decades of the 19th century, as the latecomer German Empire enters the world stage, presents itself and shapes its identity in Berlin; the 1920s, as the debacle of the First World War gives way to a politically and economically unstable liberal democracy that produces some of the most provocative art, literature and film of all time; and finally, the 1980s, in which the divided Germany met—or did not meet—at the Berlin Wall, and in which this great city witnessed literally and figuratively the collapse of the dividing structure of the Cold War.

Berlin will serve as an organizational structure for our cultural historical investigations of these epochs. We will work with a variety of texts and media, ranging from maps, floor plans and structural schemata, military and servant costumes, to advertising, diaries, fictional literature, films, art and music. Our critical questions will be interdisciplinary, as we seek to understand how various forms of cultural representation shaped and were shaped by this particular urban experience.

As a first-year seminar, this course will place particular emphasis on the development of college-level critical thinking, writing, and discussion skills. Class discussion, writing assignments and exams will be structured in such a way as to build those skills, and there will be regular reflection on our process in class.

Student responsibilities, in addition to attendance and participation, will include a series of shorter papers, one of which will be developed into a longer paper, and three exams. The course will be conducted in English and no knowledge of German is required.

Required Texts (available at campus book store)

David Clay Large, Berlin (ISBN: 046502632X)
Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900 (ISBN: 067402222X)
Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories (ISBN: 0811200701)
Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl (ISBN: 1892746816)
Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper (ISBN: 0226739414)

[Additional course readings will be distributed in class or available on the syllabus.]

Writing Requirements

Like all first-year seminars, this course is writing-intensive, meaning that you will regularly submit written assignments, most of which will be brief, and some of which will be revised. All of your writing must be computer-generated, spell-checked (unless you're a whiz-bang speller), and submitted as email attachments to the writing assistant or professor, as required.

• "Response Papers" are brief (1-page) written discussions of an assigned question, text passage, or artifact (you can find the assignment by clicking on the syllabus links). Your discussion should be both personal and analytical, that is, your subjective viewpoint should be clear, but the reasoning behind your response should be clear as well.

• "Essays," limited to 5 pages, will deal more extensively with larger critical questions, generally tying specific examples to the larger themes of the course. Here you will have some choice on the topic; if you want to write on a topic of your own choosing, you need to check it out with the professor first. Each essay will be submitted to the writing assistant first for screening for mechanical errors and overall clarity, then to the professor for more specific comments. You will revise each essay once and re-submit it to the professor.

• The "expanded essay" (ca. 15 pages) will use one of the three essays as a starting point and add a critical research component. The specific bibliographical requirements will be discussed later in the course. The expanded essay will be revised once.

Note: a "0" in any category results in failure in the course.