European Languages and Societies Commons^™

At The End Of Life: Conceptualizing Human Dignity And Assisted Suicide Debates In Contemporary Germany, Edith-Marie Green

Honors Theses

As medicine improves and breakthroughs on cures for illnesses formerly thought deadly continue to develop, the global population continues to age. This has introduced new concerns about aging and end-of-life health care. One proposed end-of-life healthcare solution is assisted suicide, although the practice is not without its controversies. The case of assisted suicide in Germany is of particular interest for a variety of reasons, and the practice has not had an easy path there. A series of debates in 2015 led to the practice being banned, but that ban was overturned in 2020 by Germany’s Constitutional Court. While assisted suicide …

I Was Looking For God: A Study Of Wehrmacht Personnel And Their Personal Relationships With Religion, Christopher Bishop

Master's Theses

The Wehrmacht was Germany’s fighting force in the field during World War II. Its brutality and discriminatory practices rivaled that of the Nazi paramilitary and police units dispatched alongside them in newly conquered areas during this conflict. Coming from a society that was not at all unfamiliar with Christianity, some within the Wehrmacht related to Christianity in some form and attempted to use it to either justify actions or make sense of the world around them.

While considerable scholarship exists on the Nazi Party’s relationship to Christianity as a convenient propaganda tool for both soldier and civilian alike, the historiography …

The Trends Of Right-Wing Populism In Germany Post-World War Ii, Savannah Green

CMC Senior Theses

This paper aims to shed light on the trends of right-wing populism in tandem with immigration rates, economic indicators, and social welfare and active labor market initiatives in Germany after World War II. The current right-wing populist party in Germany, the Alternative for Deutschland, has had a sharp increase in support in recent years and currently sits as the third largest party in Germany. Looking at trends from past right-wing populist parties, I identify the important characteristics of the current climate that allow right-wing populist parties to flourish.

Fatih Akin's Cinema And The New Sound Of Europe, Seda Öz

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Berna Gueneli's Fatih Akin's Cinema and the New Sound of Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019).

Forced Migration: A Syrian Exodus To Germany, Taylor Witt

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

The Syrian Civil War has killed over 500,000 people and displaced over 12 million since it began in 2011. The conflict has resulted in forced migration on a massive scale. Syrian people have been displaced within Syria, to the surrounding Arab states and to Europe. This has led to an immigration crisis in some parts of the European Union. Germany has become a primary destination for these refugees, but nationalist, xenophobic forces have started pushing back against what is perceived to be an invasion of foreigners into their land and their borders. This project examines the sentiments of German citizens …

Sebald Beham And The Augsburg Printer Niclas Vom Sand: New Documents On Printing And Frankfurt Before 1550, Alison Stewart

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

This essay makes known two unpublished documents from the last years of the life of Sebald Beham (1500 Nuremberg–1550 Frankfurt) and uses them as a means to explore Beham’s relationship to printing, the town of Frankfurt, and the Augsburg printer Niclas vom Sand, who remains an unwritten part of the history of the period. The essay is organized as an autobiographical retrospective by an older man forced in prior decades to move from Nuremberg and seek employment and a new life elsewhere. The end of the essay evaluates the documents and aspects of them.

“Ewig ‘Schön’”: Politics And Poetics In The Work And Correspondence Of Sarah Kirsch And Helga Novak, Sophia J. Logan

Senior Projects Fall 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

A Salisbury Christmas In Berlin, 1838, Robin Dougherty

Roberta L. Dougherty

Learning To Live With The Other Germany In The Post-Wall Federal Republic, Kathrin M. Bower

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

After forty years of separation, neither the West Germans nor the East Germans were prepared for the impact of reunification. But had the peoples of the two countries developed separate cultural identities to such an extent that the dissolution of the border represented merely the illusion of a return to sociocultural community? Since the collapse of the East German state in 1989 and the subsequent suturing of divided Germany in 1990, scores of books and articles have been published on the economic and political conditions that led inexorably, or less so, to the demise of the GDR, as well as …

Made In Germany: Integration As Inside Joke In The Ethno-Comedy Of Kaya Yanar And Bülent Ceylan, Kathrin M. Bower

Kathrin M. Bower

As the largest “foreign” population in Germany, Turkish immigrants have been the primary target for concerns about integration and the impact of immigration on German culture. Since the founding of the first Turkish German cabaret in 1985 by Şinasi Dikmen and Muhsin Omurca, the misconceptions and one-sided expectations associated with integration have been played, parodied, and satirized by Turkish German performers. As producers of contemporary ethno-comedy, Kaya Yanar and Bülent Ceylan appeal to mass audiences with a new approach, inverting questions of integration by creating communities through laughter in which audiences are at once in on the joke and its …

Minority Identity As German Identity In Conscious Rap And Gangsta Rap: Pushing The Margins, Redefining The Center, Kathrin M. Bower

Kathrin M. Bower

After rap entered the German music scene in the 1980s, it developed into a variety of styles that reflect Germany's increasingly multiethnic social fabric. Politically conscious rap assumed greater relevance after unification, focusing on issues of discrimination, integration, and xenophobia. Gangsta rap, with its emphasis on street conflict and violence, brought the ghetto to Germany and sparked debates about the condition of German cities and the erosion of civic consciousness. Alternately celebrated and reviled by the media, both styles utilize rap's synthesis of authenticity and performance to redefine the relationship between minority identity and German identity and debunk Leitkultur.

The Artist's Lament In 1528. Exile, Printing, And The Reformation, Alison Stewart

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

The plight of painters and other artists was not an easy one when the Reformation made inroads into German-speaking lands. Commissions for Catholic subjects and altarpieces dried up as a result of Lutheran influence. Two laments dating from the early Reformation period address the artist's situation. Both are brief, date from 1526 and 1528, and appear in different contexts - one in a letter of introduction and the other in a printed pamphlet. The first concerns the painter Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98- 1543) whose portraits painted for King Henry VIII and his court indicate that the pictorial genre of …

Identities And Inbetweens: The Vietnamese And Assimilation Strategies In Germany, Andrew C. Downs

Honors College Theses

Multiculturalism has met with opposition in Germany as many of its native citizens have expressed their dissatisfaction with the country’s immigrant population. The problem, however, really lies in the system of integration utilized by Germany. The German government claims multiculturalism has failed, yet the integration approach the country utilizes is actually somewhere between multiculturalism and assimilation. This research suggests that Germany has not attempted true multiculturalism. The supposed failure of multiculturalism is often blamed on the apparent unwillingness of immigrants to integrate, but Germans are hesitant to accept even the better integrated immigrant groups, such as the Vietnamese. To illustrate …

Coverage Of The Euro Crisis In Spanish, German, British, And American Elite Newspapers, Katrina Schwarz

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the relationships among culture, economic policy, and news content in the European economic context. The three variables can affect one another, and the effects of information and policy can influence the future of the European Union. The culture measure included opinion and government support in the news. The economic policy measure included austerity and bailout stances. Content analysis of news content from significant periods in 2011 and 2012 in elite Spanish, German, British and American news revealed differences in news coverage. The sample included 646 articles. Spanish and German news had the most coverage of the euro …

Man’S Best Friend? Dogs And Pigs In Early Modern Germany, Alison Stewart

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

When Jacob Seisenegger and Titian painted individual portraits of Emperor Charles V around 1532, a dog replaced such traditional accouterments of imperial power as crown, scepter, and orb.3 Charles placed one hand on the dog’s collar, a gesture indicating his companion’s noble qualities including faithfulness.4 At the same time, another more down-to-earth meaning for the dog had become prominent in the decades before the imperial portraits: the interest in and ability to eat anything in sight. This pig-like ability resulted in dogs, alongside pigs, becoming emblems of indiscriminate and gluttonous eating and drinking during the early sixteenth century when humanists, …

Made In Germany: Integration As Inside Joke In The Ethno-Comedy Of Kaya Yanar And Bülent Ceylan, Kathrin M. Bower

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

As the largest “foreign” population in Germany, Turkish immigrants have been the primary target for concerns about integration and the impact of immigration on German culture. Since the founding of the first Turkish German cabaret in 1985 by Şinasi Dikmen and Muhsin Omurca, the misconceptions and one-sided expectations associated with integration have been played, parodied, and satirized by Turkish German performers. As producers of contemporary ethno-comedy, Kaya Yanar and Bülent Ceylan appeal to mass audiences with a new approach, inverting questions of integration by creating communities through laughter in which audiences are at once in on the joke and its …

The National Imagination (Spring 2012), Robert D. Tobin, Marvin D'Lugo, Alice Valentine

Syllabi

What images make people think of the United States of America? Cowboys? The flag? And are there similar icons in other cultures that help define cultural identity? The National Imagination explores the concept of a national community as constructed and critiqued through literary and cinematic narratives, as well as other cultural texts.

Our underlying premise is that national languages and cultures promote the identity of particular communities. We are interested in examining those subjective expressions of culture—images, symbols, narratives—that lead people to feel that they are members of the communities we call nations. We are also interested in discovering points …

Minority Identity As German Identity In Conscious Rap And Gangsta Rap: Pushing The Margins, Redefining The Center, Kathrin M. Bower

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

After rap entered the German music scene in the 1980s, it developed into a variety of styles that reflect Germany's increasingly multiethnic social fabric. Politically conscious rap assumed greater relevance after unification, focusing on issues of discrimination, integration, and xenophobia. Gangsta rap, with its emphasis on street conflict and violence, brought the ghetto to Germany and sparked debates about the condition of German cities and the erosion of civic consciousness. Alternately celebrated and reviled by the media, both styles utilize rap's synthesis of authenticity and performance to redefine the relationship between minority identity and German identity and debunk Leitkultur.

The Cultural Memory Of German Victimhood In Post-1990 Popular German Literature And Television, Pauline Ebert

Wayne State University Dissertations

My dissertation analyzes the representation of Germans as victims of the Third Reich and the Second World War in post-1990 German memory. After unification, there no longer were two states that could each blame the other as the heir of National Socialism and this past had to be renegotiated. The claim that many Germans had been victims became central as evidenced by the vast number of popular literature, commercial cinema and television programs of this subject. I argue with Wulf Kansteiner (2006) that to understand collective memory, we should explore mass media representations. As the majority of highbrow artifacts do …

Reviews

The Bridge

Peeling the Onion is the intriguing name of the memoirs written by the celebrated German author, Gunter Grass, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. His memoirs cover the twenty-year period from the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 until the publication of his best selling book, The Tin Drum, in 1959. In other words, the book begins in Danzig, where he was born and lived with his parents and sister, and it also ends in Danzig, where the novel, The Tin Drum, takes place.

Matie's Dagbog [Matie' S Diary], Matie Eliva Petersen-Larsen

The Bridge

Matie begins her diary, "I think I will begin a diary of this my most exciting year, so I will not forget a small thing. But for now I must hurry to my stateroom and pack my luggage." That was September 7, 1900, on a ship headed for Cuxhaven, Germany, her ultimate destination being the island of Als, Denmark, where her father's relatives lived. Matie had been given this year-long trip as a gift from her parents for helping to raise her eight brothers and sisters, younger than she, and for teaching them to read and write English, as Danish …

Um 1800 (Spring 2006) (Whitman College), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

This course was taught by Robert Tobin at Whitman College. Professor Tobin worked at Whitman for 18 years as associate dean of the faculty and chair of the humanities, and was named Cushing Eells Professor of the Humanities.

"In this course, we are attempting to get a sense of the richness of the cultural life of German-speaking central Europe around 1800, when there was a flowering of literature, philosophy, music and the arts flowered. We will read a variety of texts in German from a variety of disciplines and develop our skills as literary analysts, cultural critics, and readers of …

Trends. When Governments Want Government To Change, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This Trends article discusses regime change in Germany and Iraq in a political psychological context.

Book Notes: Ambiguous Loss. Learning To Live With Unresolved Grief, Between The Alps And A Hard Place: Switzerland In World War Ii And Moral Blackmail Today, Around The World In Twenty Days: The Story Of Our History-Making Balloon Flight, Vergessene Geschichte: Illustrierte Chronik Der Frauenbewegung, Pauline Boss, Angelo Codeville, Bertrand Picard, Brian Jones, Mathe Gosteli

Swiss American Historical Society Review

No abstract provided.

Memories Of World War Two, Alice Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Each family was obligated to get a plot of land in order to grow vegetables, potatoes, and Indian corn. I abhorred working in field and garden, but luckily my younger sister enjoyed such tasks. Therefore I did the household chores, mended clothes and, for instance, spent hours undoing the runs in nylon stockings with a special hair-thin hook. The stockings were so expensive, so special, and so dearly beloved, yet one was not to wear them with runs.

Gertrude Hofmann Langer. The Story Of A Life, Edward G. Langer

Swiss American Historical Society Review

I was born on May 1, 1911 in Kttsnacht, Canton Zttrich, Switzerland. That day is a national holiday in Switzerland which is their equivalent of our Labor Day. It certainly was Labor Day for my mother, Marie Walder Hofmann. (December 22, 1890 - August 23, 1959). The name Kttsnacht means a kiss in the night. My name was a very common name in Switzerland at the time. I had no middle name. The Swiss spelling of my name is Gertrud.

Swiss Settlers Of The Carolina Back Country: Saxe Gotha, Switzers' Neck, The Dutch Fork, And Lexington, Claudette Holliday

Swiss American Historical Society Review

The Township Act and Saxe Gotha The year was 1716 and a lone outpost, the Congaree garrison, located about five miles below the mouth of the Saluda River and below the Congaree Creek on the western bank of the Congaree River offered little protection for low country settlements from Indians resisting the take-over of their homelands. By 1722 the garrison was abandoned.

Book Review: Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality In World War Ii., Karl Wood

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Stephen P. Halbrook's 1998 book, Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II is a well-narrated account of the Swiss preparedness to resist any possible invasion by a hostile power, but most especially by the Nazis, through the critical years of the 1930s and 1940s. The author brings to bear his considerable skills of persuasion and journalistic perception, reminiscent of the late William Shirer, of whose work he makes extensive use for historical perspective. He offers an argument that the "true Swiss experience in the war" lay not in the recently much-discussed accommodations made to the Nazis, "a regrettable …

Book Review: Dorlikon An Der Grenze Des Wachstums. Zur Kulturgeschichte Einer Zürcher Dorfschaft Im 17. Jahrhundert., Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Review

This impressive study has three main sections. The author offers, first, what he titles as Erzählung, that is narrative or story. In five chapters he gives a wealth of detail about the lives of the Dorlikon families, their struggle to meet the challenges of a sometimes harsh climate, their sparse resources due to bad harvests, the resulting loss of rented farms, and the cycles of birth, procreation, and death. Their valorous strivings as well as occasional misdeeds are reconstructed with meticulous concern for exact documentation. Key documents are cited in their original seventeenth century German. What emerges is a …

Bombing The Sister Republic: The United States And Switzerland During World War Ii, James H. Hutson

Swiss American Historical Society Review

At 11:10 A.M., April 1, 1944, American military authorities in London received the following "strike message" from aircraft attacking a target in Europe: "392 Group bombed Last Resort with poor results at 10:50 hours. " This terse communication described the "gravest violation " of Swiss neutrality during the Second World War--in fact, during the entire twentieth century: the bombing of the city of Schafthausen by planes of the 2nd Division of the American 8th Army Air Force.