Not offered 2007-2008
GERM 202 Berlin-Multicultural Metropolis Between East and West
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, Geschwister.
Frequent short writing assignments. Conducted in German.
Prerequisite: German 201 or equivalent.
DRUXES