(Taken by ALL students in Year 2)

This second year core module, obligatory for all undergraduates taking German-related degrees, seeks to locate developments in German culture in the context of a society that underwent rapid transformation, from monarchy through parliamentary democracy to dictatorship, within fifteen years. Operating with a broad definition of culture, we look at a wide range of material, including prose, drama, poetry, feature films (silent and sound), speeches, essays, photomontage, painting and architecture.

Films studied on the course include:

Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1927), Fritz Lang, M. Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1930); Leontine Sagan, Mädchen in Uniform (1931); Joseph von Sternberg, Der blaue Engel (1930); Brecht/Dudow/Ottwalt, Kuhle Wampe (1932); Fritz Hippler, Der Ewige Jude, (1940); Hans Steinhoff, Hitlerjunge Quex (1933); Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph des Willens (1934); Bertolt Brecht, Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (1972 Berliner Ensemble performance); Charles Chaplin, The Great Dictator (1940); Rolf Hansen, Die grosse Liebe (1942);

Texts studied on the course include:

Ernst Toller, Masse Mensch, Hoppla, wir leben! Bertolt Brecht, Die Heilige Johanna der Schlachthoefe, Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui, Erich Maria Remarque, Im Westen Nichts Neues, Hans Fallada, Kleiner Mann, was nun? Thomas Mann Mario und der Zauberer, Klaus Mann, Mephisto, Irmgard Keun, Gilgi. Eine von uns.

Apart from further developing close reading and analytical skills, the module aims to stimulate interest in a range of issues, including the following:

What do we understand by ideology? How does it differ from a philosophy, or a set of ideas?

What are the key differences, in theory and practice, between Communism and National Socialism?

Are individuality and collective responsibility by definition mutually exclusive concepts?

Politics and morality: are the two complementary or mutually exclusive?

Patriotism and Nationalism: What are the differences? What specific significance did they acquire in the 1920s and 1930s?

Are some culturally specific concepts (e.g. Heimat, Volk, can you think of many others?) by definition untranslatable??

Film and literature: what are the relative merits of the two media as regards efficacy a) as propaganda media, b) as media for the differentiated treatment of serious political and moral issues?

Past and present: To what extent should we put ourselves into the position of the contemporary reader or viewer when studying texts? Are there such things as universal criteria for judging cultural products, and, if so, to what extent should we give them priority over historical criteria

What can cultural products reveal that historical, economic, philosophical, political studies cannot?

Expressionism, Realism, Functionalism, parody, allegory: What are the characteristic features of different aesthetic forms, and their relative merits as mediators of social, moral and political criticism?

Intellectuals and politics: What was the attitude of intellectuals to the new democracy of the Weimar Republic.

Modernity, Modernism, anti-modernism: To what extent did the 1920s mark the beginning of the modern age in respect of culture and democracy? To what extent were the Nazis an avowedly anti-modernist movement?

Module tutors: Stephen Lamb (co-ordinator), Rob Burns, Jim Jordan and Tom Steward