GERM 364 - The Birth of Modern Germany

This course explores German literature and thought during the Industrial Revolution as well as concomitant social and political events, the creation of the customs union, the drive for national unity and for a constitutional guarantee of civil rights, the revolutions of 1848 and the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. We will critique the concept of realism and the project of representing reality in the arts. Among the thinkers and writers considered are Nietzsche, Heine, Droste-Hülshoff, von Ebner Eschenbach, Mörike, Keller, Storm and Gerhart Hauptmann (whose play “The Weavers” dramatizes the social effects of automation in the 1840s). Taught in German. Alternate years. Prerequisite(s):

GERM 308

(4 Credits)