German Language and Literature Commons^™

Towards A Queer Weimar Cinema: Spaces, Narratives, And Influences, Elizabeth M. Lynch Sullivan

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

“Mit Josefine Muss Es Abwärts Gehen”: Making Audible The Conflicted Narrator Of Kafka’S “Josefine”, Kamil Alexander Karpiak

Senior Projects Fall 2023

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

The Other Side Of Silence: The Productive Limits Of Human Awareness And The Novel, Aven Elaina Williams

Senior Projects Spring 2022

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

Ilse Weber And Alma Rosé: Women Artists Fighting For Survival In The Shoah, Shaunessy F. Renker

Senior Projects Spring 2022

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

Bildung As Cult: Education Through Secret Societies In German Literature, Henry Charles Smith Levin

Senior Projects Spring 2021

This paper will focus on aspects of German literature that convey ideas of education in unorthodox ‘classrooms’, namely through the tutelage of mystic organizations, or cults if you will. Cults are typically associated with Manson style blood-soaked ritual, passionate and even erotic worship of a charismatic pseudo-intellectual. However German literature often features a more benevolent form of cult, where the proposed magic is real, the leader worthy of their pedestal, and the purpose is to oppose either literal oppressive regimes or more abstract regimes of malaise and doldrums.

The Magic Flute puts the cult of Sarastro’s Brotherhood and its Egyptian …

Fort! Da!: Thinking Death In Freud And Faust, Mercer M. Greenwald

Senior Projects Spring 2021

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

Der Froschkönig: Einer Epilog, Avery N. Greenberg

Senior Projects Spring 2020

The goal of this project is to give the viewer the immersive experience of touring the portrait hall in the castle of the Froschkönig (Frog King). While the moniker of the Froschkönig is passed down through the royal family, the installation centers around Kaiser Frogerick Wilhelm III. The first room contains the portraits, displayed chronologically, of a selection of members of the royal family that most influenced Kaiser Frogerick. This includes his first wife, Louise von Mecklenpond, his second wife, Aguppy von Harach, his father Frogerick Wilhelm II, his mother, Frogerica Louise von Fresse-Swarmstadt, his grandfather, Augustoad Wilhelm, and his …

From Holy German Art To Degenerate Art: Nazi Ideology And Opera, Jingyi Zhou

Senior Projects Fall 2020

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

Der Ort Des Gedichts / Eine Reise In Die »Winterantwort«: Eine Lektüre Der Poetik Ilse Aichingers, April Fionn Perin Wogenburg

Senior Projects Spring 2020

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

Poetic Becoming: Building With Heidegger, Isabella Menuez Santana

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Life And "The Wall", Joshua Walter Murphy

Senior Projects Spring 2020

I spent four years living in Berlin, Germany and I have always been fascinated by the idea of the Berlin wall. Not the historic significance of the wall – that is more than well documented – but it’s significance on the life and mentality of Berliners and Germans from both sides. My school was located in Potsdam, former East Germany, but my home was located in Mitte, former West Berlin. For four years I travelled to the former East almost daily. Although the country has long since reunified, something about the former East and the former West still feels very …

How To Be An Artist: An Investigation In Dialogue With Rainer Maria Rilke And Virginia Woolf, Amber Nicole Junker

Senior Projects Spring 2020

In 1929, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet was published, a text which quickly became one of his most renowned works. 1932 saw the publication of Virginia Woolf’s “A Letter to a Young Poet,” a text which is not held by critics as one of her best. Yet Woolf’s letter should not be ignored, as it allows for a comparison between herself and Rilke, two modernists who are rarely put into conversation. Though this comparison originates from the surface level—the curious similarity between the titles of these works—I have found that it is their nearness in content that …

Maidens In Maizes: Johnson, Grimms, D'Aulnoy, Hannah M. Johnson

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College. A German Studies and Written Arts joint project, with a collection of original fairy tales as well as an in-depth analysis of female agency, female mutilation, religious influence, and language within the fairy tales of Grimms and Madame d'Aulnoy.

Nietzsche And Expressionism: The Neue Mensch In Kafka, Kaiser, And Strauss, Marion Stoll Adams

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Nietzsche's Übermensch and the Expressionist Neue Mensch are two difficult, cryptic, and contradictory ideas. This project compares the Neue Mensch to the Übermensch through the process of transformation, in hopes of better understanding both concepts. The following chapters are an analysis of Franz Kafka’s short story “Das Urteil”, Georg Kaiser’s play Von morgens bis mitternachts, and Richard Strauss’ opera Salome. Through a side-by-side reading of Expressionist literature and Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra, we can see how the Expressionists expanded upon, and experimented with, the concept of the Übermensch.

Heimkehr Ohne Einkehr: Der Problematisierte Heimatbegriff Bei Dürrenmatt Und Schimmelpfennig, Yu Cai

Senior Projects Fall 2018

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

Hansel And Gretel On The Page And Stage: Literary And Operatic Adaptations Of Grimm’S Fairy-Tale, Meilin Wei

Senior Projects Fall 2018

This project focuses on Brothers Grimm's fairy-tale "Hansel and Gretel," taking the original story, its musical arrangements, and its contemporary adaptations into consideration.

The Objectivity Of Subjectivity: The Dialectics Of Marx, Lenin, And Brecht, Timothy Wells

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Everyone And No One: Freedom, Politics And God In Hegel's Philosophy Of Freedom, Samuel J. Copeland

Senior Projects Spring 2018

This senior project is an exploration of G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy of freedom. It draws primarily on Hegel's texts The Phenomenology of Spirit, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, and Lectures on the Philosophy of History. The exploration of Hegel's concept of freedom brings in an analysis of Hegel's Lordship and Bondage Dialectic, his critique of Kantian morality, his philosophy of the State and his philosophy of Religion and God.

“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.

From Once Upon A Time To Happily Ever After: Grimms’ Fairy Tales And Early Childhood Development, Hannah Mccarley

Senior Projects Spring 2017

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

An Outsider's Perspective: Walter Benjamin's Vision Of Philosophy, Bethany Alden Zulick

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Devil Figure In Goethe, Boito, And Gounod, Shuang Yang

Senior Projects Fall 2016

Faust written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is a worldwide famous master piece. It has been not only translated into many other languages, but also used as basis of other works such as opera, music piece, drama, movie and so on. After I read and watched Goethe’s Faust, Arrigo Boito’s opera Mefistofele and Charles Gounod’s opera Faust, I found that the drama’s protagonist is not the Faust what we think normally, instead it is actually another figure…

Goethe’S Faust And Nineteenth-Century Music: Liszt’S Faust Symphony, Mengying Wei

Senior Projects Fall 2016

This project talks about Liszt’s Faust Symphony based on Goethe’s Faust. It traces carefully through the score. After reading this project, the reader will get to know more about the Faust Symphony. As a composer, how does Liszt understand the Faust legend and how would he put a literary work into a musical composition.

Mauricio Kagel And His Multifaceted Lieder-Oper, Aus Deutschland, Petra Elek

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

The Graphic Gregor Samsa: Can Kafka's Creature Be Brought To Life?, Samantha J. Sacks

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

Beginning In Heidegger, Nietzsche, And Mallarmé, Austen H. Hinkley

Senior Projects Spring 2016

This project is focused on the theme of beginning. The first chapter is a reading of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time as an attempt at beginning a new ontology that understands itself as a construct that must be, to quote Heidegger, “critical against itself.” The second chapter is a reading of three of Nietzsche's metaphors as a way of both examining and enacting a beginning. The third chapter is concerned with Mallarmé’s revolution of poetic form in Un coup de Dés, which enacts a new beginning on which the poem reflects through its images and form. Through an understanding of …

Siddhartha's Smile: Schopenhauer, Hesse, Nietzsche, Benjamin Dillon Schluter

Senior Projects Fall 2015

In this project, I argue that Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha can be read as an attempted reconciliation the antithetical worldviews of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. The first two chapters show that the figures of Gotama and Siddhartha represent Schopenhauerian and Nietzschean worldviews, respectively. The third chapter analyzes the smile as a symbol used to reconcile Siddhartha and Gotama. In the fourth and final chapter, I investigate Hesse’s development of symbol of the smile in relation to his engagement with Chinese philosophy, specifically Taoism, a tradition of thought based on the ultimate reconciliation of apparent opposites.

Ways Of Light: An Analysis Of The Motif Of Light In Thomas Brussig`S Wie Es Leuchtet, Noemi Sallai

Senior Projects Fall 2015

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

The Wreck Of Titanic: A Comedy, Christopher Giuggio Shea

Senior Projects Spring 2014

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

Kafka On Trial: Polysemy And Epistemological Enactment In Modern Literature, Michael Chew

Senior Projects Spring 2012

Examination of shortcoming and merits of polysemic language in Modern Literature (Fishhouse)