GERM 205
Berlin--Multicultural Metropolis Between East and West Spring 2022
Division I
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Class Details

We will examine texts and films about Berlin as a center of cultural and social transformations in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with special emphasis on the post-wall period. We will move from the turn of the century (when the city’s population had recently tripled in size) to the establishing of Berlin as a world capital in the 1920s, then through Nazi-era transformations, wartime destruction and the cold war division of the city. We will conclude with the reshaping of the city after the fall of the Berlin wall. Texts and films may include: Walter Benjamin, Berliner Kindheit um 1900, excerpts from Ulrich van der Heyden und Joachim Zeller’s Kolonialmetropole Berlin, Walter Ruttmann, Sinfonie einer Großstadt, Irmgard Keun’s Das kunstseidene Mädchen, Nazi architect Albert Speer’s plans for Berlin as the fascist capital “Germania,” the 1956 East German youth protest film Ecke Schönhauser, short fiction by Reiner Kunze, Aras Ören, Peter Schneider, Bodo Morshäuser, Irina Liebmann. Recent films to be included are: Sonnenallee, Goodbye, Lenin!, Berlin is in Germany, Berlin Calling.
The Class: Format: seminar; seminar/discussion
Limit: 15
Expected: 6
Class#: 3580
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: frequent short writing assignments; oral presentations with partner, one 5-6pp. essay
Prerequisites: GERM 201 or equivalent
Enrollment Preferences: Sophomores and Juniors
Distributions: Division I
Attributes: GBST Urbanizing World

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