GERM 309 - Culture and the Capital: Urban Experience in Berlin and Vienna

The big city is a relatively new phenomenon. Made possible by electricity, the automobile, and rapid industrialization, it introduced a shock into modern life that continues to resonate through literature, painting, dance, music, architecture, art, and film. This course invites students with intermediate German-language skills to examine two major capitals and the culture they engender. On the one hand Vienna, the epicenter of not one but two former empires, steeped in decadence and decay. On the other hand Berlin, a city that has always been defined by division: between socialists and fascists, between the Soviet east and American west, and now between the bike-riding center and car-centric periphery. The course is designed to prepare students for advanced German study, by focusing on original German-language documents written in and about these twin metropoles. Themes will range from the coffee house to the cabaret, from urban anonymity to the ‘new woman,’ from the shock of city dwelling to DADA. Three hours per week plus one hour of intensive language practice. The course is conducted in German; all readings, writing, presentations, etc. are in German. Prerequisite(s): GERM 204 or permission of instructor. Every spring. (4 Credits)