“Magnificent Rebels” — Reading by Andrea Wulf

Join Agnes Scott College’s German Studies Program and the Goethe Center Atlanta on September 20, 7pm for a free reading and presentation with Andrea Wulf. Click here for more information and to rsvp.

Did you take a “selfie” in the last 24 hours? And did you post it on Instagram or another social media platform? Are emotional connections with the world important to you?

If you said yes to any of the above questions you are continuing a practice of perceiving your self in the world that started back in the late 1700s in the literary and philosophical circles of England and Germany. Andrea Wulf explores this history in her most recent book, Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of The Self. The core of the book revolves around a group of people with very prominent names in German cultural history: Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Schlegel, and Schelling once belonged to the list of writers and thinkers whose works formed the canonical reading list for every highschool and college student. For many good reasons, this male and exclusionary idea of the canon has been put to rest. German literature today is being reshaped by a wide range of diverse authors from all over the world, and along with it the idea of German culture. But the ways in which these early Romantics talked and wrote about their feelings and how they perceived themselves in a modernizing world resonate until today.

Wulf demonstrates that rereading these older philosophers and thinkers in 2022 doesn’t have to be a backwards exercise. Rather, while she’s not silent about these authors’ often privileged professional and private lives, Wulf underscores that their works hold important keys for understanding today’s ideas of self, identity, and emotion. Centering her narrative on the city of Jena, a small town in what was then the duchy of Weimar-Saxony, Wulf also reaffirms the crucial but repeatedly silenced roles of women in this particular history. Caroline Schlegel appears as a fascinating intellectual contributor to the literary and cultural debates of the time and forms an important example for the need to retell this history from a new angle.

Please join us on Tuesday, September 20, at 7pm for a reading and presentation by Andrea Wulf, followed by a reception. This event is free and open to the public and co-hosted by Agnes Scott College’s German Studies Program and the Atlanta Goethe Center. We are grateful for The Halle Foundation’s generous support for this event.

For more information about the location and to register please click here. 

P.S.: If the name Andrea Wulf sounds familiar to you it’s not a coincidence: She read and presented her NYT bestselling book The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World at Agnes Scott College in 2018.

German Author Peter Schneider on 25th Anniversary of Fall of the Wall

National Public Radio today had an interview with German author Peter Schneider, asking him about his views of Berlin 25 years after those stirring  days in November 1989 that brought down the wall and changed Europe’s history.Schneider has just finished a new book, called “Berlin Now,” where he brings to bear his experience of 50 plus years in Berlin on the current situation. Among German readers, Schneider is well known as the author of several by now canonical works. Most notably with regard to the Berlin Wall is his “Wall Jumper” [Mauerspringer], which addresses life in a divided city. But his literary accounts of the student revolution, published in his “Lenz” and, much more recently, in the semi-documentary novel “Rebellion und Wahn,” are equally popular.

There is an Agnes Scott connection:

Germany 25 Years after the Fall of the Wall

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about history and culture in an international perspective: Three of our German exchange students, Anna Beier, Carolin Hehl, and Hannah Ziehm will discuss how Germans view the East – West relations in Germany 25 years after the wall came down. (Event will be in English, for more information consult the poster.)

Former Stasi Prison Hohenschönhausen

The leisurely walk through a nice residential area makes it difficult to prepare for our visit to Hohenschönhausen, the former remand prison of the GDR’s secret police–STASI. At the same time it underscores the secretive nature of this project: Over fifty years, this large compound in the Eastern outskirts of Berlin could not be found on any map. Residents of the area were told that a police training facility and a large kitchen are located behind the walls. The prison was first used by the Soviet Union, which had occupied Germany’s east after WW II and then functioned as protector of the newly created state, the GDR, from 1949 on. In 1959, the GDR’s secret police took over and, over the decades, “treated” at least 7,000 prisoners in this facility. In other words, they used a wide range of psychological forms of torture to manipulate prisoners–political dissidents, intellectuals, artists, etc.–into confessing “crimes against the people.”

Exploring Berlin

An exploration of the historical district of Berlin was scheduled for our first full day in Germany. We started out at the Hackeschen Höfe, the beautifully restored city block featuring restaurants, small shops, and residential areas. Dating back to the early 20th century, this ensemble was badly damaged in World War II and barely renovated during the GDR period. Today the courtyards look great again, illustrating the attraction of what nowadays is called “mixed-use development,” but also the fact that this kind of expensive renovation comes at the cost of replacing small independent shops with international brands.

ASC in Germany 2014

On May 11 another group of Scotties will depart for Germany to study aspects of history, culture, and environmental regulation on location. The two-week study trip will be co-lead by Profs. Gundolf Graml (German Studies, also the main author of this blog) and Katherine Smith (Art History). We will spend our first week in Berlin where we will meet with representatives from government and from cultural organizations. The second week will lead us from Berlin to Dresden, Leipzig, and Weimar, where we will visit historical sites such as the former concentration camp of Buchenwald near Weimar, meet with leaders of the Dresden city government, and learn about the philosophy behind the Volkswagen company’s architectural design of a car manufacturing plant in the heart of Dresden. And, of course, we will try to meet as many former Scotties as we can while in Germany (I’m talking to you, Lucy Nga Than). We will try to post frequent updates on this blog and invite you to follow and ask questions.

Afro-German Memoirs by Theodor Michael and Jennifer Teege

Students of German 340 Afro-German History might be interested in my recent editorial for the website of the Collegium for African American Research (CAAR):

On Reading Two Recent Memoirs by Afro-Germans

Two recent memoirs by German authors with an African connection emphasize that German history cannot be written without including the histories and perspectives of black Germans (as well as that of many other non-white people).

In Deutsch sein und Schwarz dazu [Being German and also Being Black], published in 2013 with Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, author Theodor Michael takes a long and probing look back at his experiences as a black German. Born in 1925 to a white German mother from the Eastern Prussian provinces and a black Cameroonian father, Michael’s childhood and youth coincided with the decline of the democratic German Weimar Republic and the rise of National Socialism.

In a low key style Michael recollects his participation in the infamous Völkerschauen [colonial peoples exhibits] organized by circusses and zoos. He describes his attempts to get by as hotel page and as extra in some of the Third Reich’s anti-British colonial films. And he details the toll that life under the Nuremberg race laws took on his body and mind. While his siblings managed to get out of Germany, Theodor Michael stayed behind, spending the last years of the regime as a forced laborer in a factory outside of Berlin, where he survived the war. After liberation, he managed to get into the Western zone, where he then tried to rebuild his life.