Austin Eighan Heads to Munich for His Junior Year

The decision between Schalgobers and Schalgrahm was not an easy one to make. Having already spent a year in Melk, Austria, my decision to study for a year abroad in Munich came primarily through the desire to experience the German way of living. The Junior Year in Munich Program based out of Wayne State University will provide just that. The program provides many different opportunities for students to not only further their German speaking ability, but also their independence. Throughout my duration in the program, the mixture between the support provided by the program and my own pursuit of various classes directly at the Technische Universität München or Ludwig-Maximillians Universität München, I plan to immerse myself completely into the German culture and language. Obwohl St. John’s  mir sehr fehlen wird, freue ich mich schon sehr auf München!

Congratulations to the Salzburg Program Group 2012 -- A Bumper Year!

Congratulations, Rachel, Daniel, Alexander, Matthew, Caitlin, Benjamin, Daniel, Jacob, Colin, Steven, Christopher, Joseph, Ryan, John, Daniel, Emily, Molly, Dana, Joel, Jack, Megan, Joseph, Tyler and Cory!  You have joined a wonderful group of students. We are delighted that you have chosen to further your knowledge of European cultures, especially in Austria and Germany!  We know your worldview will expand in astonishing ways, you will make new friends, and your German will improve by leaps and bounds. Best wishes as you experience the semester of a lifetime!

We Welcome Fulbright Scholar Martin Leimser to CSB/SJU in 2012-2013

Editor's note:  Each year we are blessed with Fulbright Scholars/ Teaching Assistants who invigorate our German Studies program and classrooms in many ways -- making friends with CSB/SJU students, speaking German with you and teaching you about things European.  The following are Martin Leimser's thoughts about teaching and about his academic path so far.

Dear Students and Professors at Saint Ben's and Saint John's,

   Since I come from the very west of Austria, Vorarlberg, I grew up speaking a very distinctive dialect similar to Swiss-German. The Vorarlberg dialect is not usually intelligible at all to other German-speaking people in Austria or Germany. However, as my mother is from Upper-Austria, I was used to also speaking standard German from early youth on, and because I have many relatives in Upper-Austria I also learned the differences that arise from these different dialects. The fact that I grew up speaking both the Vorarlberg dialect and standard German actually set me apart from my peers. The dialectical diversity is a fact I would definitely like to point out about Austria.

   The different regional cultures and especially dialects might seem surprising due to the country’s size, however after from an historical point of view they are easily explained due to the country's various native inhabitants. A number of different Germanic tribes lived in the different areas of Austria and next to them.

   Being born into a family of teachers, which both my mother and my father teaching at secondary schools and many aunts and uncles in the same profession, my plan had always been to not just follow in their footsteps but to shape my own future and do something different in life. This idea was even reinforced as many of my friends and colleagues at this time told me I would inevitably become a teacher one day as they thought this profession just really suited me.

   However since my early childhood I have been fascinated by nature, the outdoors and particularly animals, so that I soon had a lot of different pets at home, some of which I also started to breed, and to my friends' delight and their parents' displeasure gave to them as pets.

   One of my uncles on my mother's side of the family, who happens to be a veterinary practitioner always strongly encouraged me to follow this passion and upon my particular desire to learn more about animals, let me watch him at work, and once I grew a little older even let me help him sometimes. As one can imagine his work seemed fascinating to me, and I soon came to the conclusion that becoming a vet was my vocation. As a consequence biology was always one of my favorite subjects in secondary school, a fascination that could only be matched by English and maybe Latin.

   After living in Vienna, 500 miles away from my hometown, for a while however, and thus being surrounded by a completely different dialect, my passion for languages, that I had already had in secondary school became renewed again too. As my cousin was studying English at that time, I took advantage of the classes she attended and started reading the books she had to read voluntarily, and in consequence got exposed to many classics of the British literature.
   Soon after, my interest began to shift gradually from veterinary medicine towards English literature and languages in general, however admitting this change of interests to myself was more painful to me than I was able to handle at this time. After all, since I had started to think about possible professions I had been convinced that veterinary medicine was my vocation and future. After two years of studying veterinary medicine I eventually decided to change my careers, as it became obvious to me that i was not meant to be a vet, but that animals and nature should rather remain to me what they had been for so many years: a wonderful hobby and responsibility. So, although I kept breeding tortoises, I moved from Vienna to Innsbruck and only knowing that I wanted to work with languages decided to consult a careers advisory service. There my advisor confirmed to me, what people had always told me already in my past: I was best suited to become a teacher.
   So I enrolled in the college of education in Innsbruck and started by studying English and Latin, as I had already loved these two subjects in secondary school. Although I liked both subjects, I came across multilingual class in the course of my didactic education one year later, and first discovered Spanish. I was immediately fascinated by this language, even more than by Latin and although I still like this language a lot, I changed my career one ore time to English and Spanish one year later. Ever since I have been fascinated by this career, and really appreciate the different fields we study in the course of this program, and the possibility of being fluent in two foreign languages offer. Consequently I have been going abroad and attending different colleges in Spain and America regularly for the last four years.

   As a future teacher I want to make sure that my students feel like individuals in the classroom and that their contribution to classroom activity is appreciated. Judging from my experience while studying abroad, I feel that this is a principle that is already carried out at American universities and I would love to work with professors that share this ideal. Another principle that matters a lot to me in my future career is for students to understand and possibly share the passion for foreign languages and cultures that I have always felt myself, and have them realize the possibilities that each language brings with it. I feel that working as a teaching assistant in my native language would be the best opportunity to convey this sentiment, as I am also a student and thus still a motivated learner myself. However, I can still act as an expert in the students' area of study.
   As I have already completed the last course of my pedagogical training at the University of Innsbruck last semester and have had the opportunity to practice various teaching methods in the course of the different internships, methodology in teaching has become of particular relevance to me.
   Although I have tried out different approaches to teaching, and am still excited to learn about new ones, I still think that one of the best techniques for a teacher to introduce a new topic is direct instruction, or frontal teaching. I feel that this is especially true when it comes to grammatical structure like the passive voice that can sometimes be hard to understand when first introduced. In this situation the best way for students to learn, is to profit from the teacher's knowledge, and have him or her explain the topic. Of course I am also convinced that it is always necessary to encourage the students to ask questions and talk about possible doubts or problems which are likely to arise.
   When it comes to communication on the other hand, I think the students' active involvement in the classroom activity is necessary to make sure that learning and progress takes place. The possibilities I can offer in this area as a native speaker are of course of considerable use, as I would definitely include open discussions with my students about various topics, and they would be exposed to authentic German.
   During my internships, however, I experienced that many students opened up significantly more when working in smaller groups, when they did not have to speak out loud in front of the whole classroom. I have thus become really fond of having my students elaborate and talk about topics in groups while I move from one group to the next one to participate in their discussion and/or listen to them for a while and possibly give them further input before moving to the next one.
   During my last internship I was also exposed to "Open Learning" for the first time, where students are given tasks and work all on their own and the teacher merely acts as a counselor that can be consulted when needed. I would definitely also like to try out this method, as I think it could probably create greater intrinsic motivation to learn on the students' behalf.

Seniors Focus on Capstone Research Projects

Sean Lynch

Medienauswirkungen der antitürkische Rhetorik der Merkelregierung
     Seit der Erfindung des Wortes “Gastarbeiter” und ihr Kommen nach Deutschland, gibt es eine Spannung zwischen den deutschen Bürgern und den Immigranten. Das Problem hatte sich weiter mit der Entwicklung der Sozialprogramme des Staates erweitert, weil die Gastarbeiter nicht deutsche Bürger sind und deswegen nicht die gewöhnlichen Steuern bezahlen müssen. Auch gibt es das Problem der Arbeitslosigkeit, das schlechter mit dem Groβen Wirtschaftsrückgang geworden ist, und Probleme wegen der neuen Anti-Islamistischen Rhetorik von den Rechtradikalen.
     Dieses Paper stellt die Frage, ob es eine Veränderung im Bildnis von den Türken im deutschen Medien gibt während der Regierung von Angela Merkel. Deutsche Filme und Zeitschriften werden untersucht um festzustellen, ob die politische Rhetorik einen Einfluß auf die Darstellung der Türken übt. Wenn es eine Verӓnderung gibt, wird die Rhetorik des Filmregisseurs oder des Politikers untersucht, um ein gemeinsamesThema zu finden.
_____________________________________________________

Tim Marzik

Die Selbstständigkeit der Musik in unserer heutigen Gesellschaft
     Als junger Musiker, spielt die Musik die allerwichtigste Rolle in meinem Leben. Ich schreibe meine eigenen Texte und werde immer von anderen Bands und ihren Ideen begeistert. Die Musik wirkt als eine selbständige Quelle für meine Entwicklung.
     Durch meinen Aufsatz will ich Änderungen in der Musik zeigen. Geschichtlich angesehen, war Deutschland sehr wichtig für Musik. Für manche Komponisten war die Musik ein Zusatz der Kirche. Bach komponierte das wundervolles Weihnachtsoratorium und die Johannespassion, aber seine Musik und Texte wurden für eine Christliche Ausstattung gemeint. Spätere Komponisten wie zum Beispiel Wagner haben Musik als Kunst für das Theater komponiert.
     Aber heute kann man tatsächlich von Musik allein eine tiefere Bedeutung finden. Bands von heute wie zum Beispiel „Hundredth“ und „Misery Signals“ schreiben sehr philosophische Lieder. Ich habe selber erlebt, wie Bands aus meiner Heimat philosophische Liedertexte schreiben. Bei einem Konzert, erlebt man einen Anstoß auf höheres Denken. Durch deutsche Komponisten und berühmte Musiker von heute will ich zeigen, dass der Raum der Musik eine selbständige Quelle der hohe Kunst und Intelligenz geworden ist.
     Quellen

1. Burkardt Anthologie (Musik Werke)
2. Dalai Lama. The Art of Happiness
3. Interview mit Hans Bernhard Hoch
4. Interview mit „Hundredth“
5. Interview mit „Letlive“
6. Nietzsche. Der Fall Wagner
7. Levetin, Daniel. This is Your Brain on Music
8. Wagner, Richard. Die Kunst und die Revolution

__________________________________________________________

Christopher Pignato

Die drei Literaturepochen Goethes

     Ich habe den Kurs „Age of Goethe“ belegt. In diesem Semester habe ich mich in die Epoche der Empfindsamkeit, Sturm und Drang, und Neo-Klassizismus eingearbeitet. Die Gedichte, die wir gelesen haben, waren Erlkönig, Prometheus, Ganymed, Wanderers Nachtlied und andere. Ich möchte eine Analyse über die drei Literaturepochen der Goethezeit durchführen. 

• Was sind die charakteristischen Merkmale des Sturm und Drang, des Neo-Klassizismus, und der Empfindsamkeit?
• Wie äuβern sich die Literaturepochen in Goethes Gedichten?
• Welche Gedichte Goethes passen zu den vorher erwähnten Literaturepochen?
• Gibt es Gedichte von Goethe, die zwei Literaturepochen repräsentieren?
• Um diese Fragen zu beantworten, würde ich weitere Bücher und Artikel über Goethe, Sturm und Drang, Empfindsamkeit, Neo-Klassizismus, und Gedichtstile untersuchen. Dann könnte ich die Stile Goethes vergleichen und kontrastieren, und schließlich in dem Kontext der Goethezeit einbetten.

Working Bibliography

1. Boyle, Nicholas. Goethe: the Poet and the Age. Oxford [England: Clarendon, 1991.
2. Friedenthal, Richard. Goethe: His Life and Times. Cleveland: World Pub., 1965.  
3. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von, and Edgar Alfred Bowring. The Poems of Goethe. London: G. Bell, 1908.   
4. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von, Christopher Middleton, and Michael Hamburger. Selected Poems. [Cambridge, Mass.]: Shuhrkamp/Insel Boston, 1983.   
5. Hennig, John. "Perception and Deception in Goethe's "Erlkoenig" and Its Sources." Modern Language Quarterly 17.3 (1956): 227-35. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. http://http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=104&sid=fab12496-f314-4ec5-973b-45dd5301a662%40sessionmgr104&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3 d%3d#db=aph&AN=10029160 .  
6. Sharpe, Lesley. The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.  
7. Viëtor, Karl, and Moses Hadas. Goethe the Poet. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1949.  
8. Williams, John R. The Life of Goethe: a Critical Biography. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1998. 

 ______________________________________________________

John Chambers

Die Schöne Müllerin:  Die Leben und Kunst von Franz Schubert und Wilhelm Müller

     Die Studie und Praxis von Musik und Dichtung kann oft zusammen leben. Als Romantiker Franz Schubert die Text von Wilhelm Müller vertont, es hat die Beziehung zwischen die Künste erläuterte. Diese Studie wird die Leben dieser Artisten und ihrer Werken vergleichen und konstrastieren. Es wird auch die musikalische, wörtliche, und historische Beziehung um Müllers Wörter und Schuberts Liederkreis erforschen. Dieses Projekt wird eine Aufführung von Sätze von Schuberts geliebte Liedkreis.  

• Historische Information über Musik und Dichtung in der Klassik.
• Biographische Information über den Artisten während der Zeit, in der die diese Werke geschrieben haben.
• Historische Information über der Dichtung
   o Kulturelle, soziale, und/oder politische Implikationen von der Erzählung
• Information über Schuberts musikalische Ausführung
• Beziehung von dem Text im Zusammenhang des Liedkreis
   o Einstellung des Gedichtes im Liedkreis
   o Musikalische Ausführung
         Wie vertont Schubert die Texte?
         Wie ergänzt die Begleitung und Melodie der Texte?

Bibliographie:

1. Baumann, C. Wilhelm Müller, the poet of the Schubert song cycles: his life and works. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981.
2. Cottrell, A.P. Wilhelm Müller’s lyrical song-cycles: interpretations and texts; Appendix: Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise, Frühlingskranz. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970.
3. Deutsch, O.E. Schubert: Die Dokumente seines Lebens. Kassel; New York: Bärenreiter, 1964.
4. Einstein, A. Schubert; A Musical Portrait. New York: Oxford University Press, 1951.
5. Feil, A., Vollmann, R. Franz Schubert: “Die Schöne Müllerin”, “Winterreise”. Stuttgart: P Reclam Jr., 1975.
6. Hardin, J.N., Schweitzer, C.E. German writers in the age of Goethe, 1789-1832. Detroit: Gale Research, 1989.
7. Klaus, K.B. The romantic period in music. Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 1970.
8. Müller, A. Nachträge zu den Schriften von Wilhelm Müller, Grabbe, Goethe, dem Maler Müller, Jean Paul und Hölderlin. Berlin: Gumprecht, 1845.
9. Müller, W. Die Winterreise und Die Schöne Müllerin. Zürich: Diogenes, 1984.
10. Schubert – Die Schöne Müllerin. Online posting. Youtube, 1. June 2007. Web.
11. Theimer, Axel. Personal interview.

 

German Faculty Continues Work on Creating New Courses and Activities

New Goals Include More Cooperation with Other CSB/SJU Departments; Continued Rise in Number of Majors and Minors; Excellence in Our Programs Abroad; and Stronger Relationships with Minnesota High School Teachers


Dear Friends,
German Departments across the nation are strengthening their curricula with new courses aimed at engaging a broader variety of students, intensifying student learning about culture, and forming partnerships with professors from a variety of departments in the humanities, arts, and sciences. Even in the process of developing new courses and extracurricular events for our department these past two years, we have seen an astonishing rise in numbers of majors and minors in German, a trend we hope will continue. Thank you to our colleagues and administrators who have given important support to our curricular developments.

Special thanks to Provost Rita Knuesel, Dave Lyndgaard, Mike Connolly in Student Development and John Taylor in Institutional Advancement for helping make the Fulbright position possible on our campuses this coming year. John, thank you again for your work on our behalf with a local foundation which supports German activities. Thank you Fr. Tom Andert for your superb teaching of German students preparing for a teaching career. Thanks also to Professors Wendy Klepetar and Gregory Schroeder. We appreciate your work with our German students who have completed the German Option in your courses in Management and German History. Thank you Mary Niedenfuer for all the energy you bring to the faculty and students of Modern and Classical Languages as department coordinator! To all of you, we are grateful to be working with colleagues like you who care deeply about students and faculty.

Brooke Kreitinger '01 Completing German PhD Degree at Georgetown University

Dear Friends at CSB/SJU,  
   Wonderful to hear from you! I hope this finds you and all in the German Department enjoying a productive, stimulating start to a new semester.  I indeed continue to use my German since graduating from St. Ben's/St. John's and hope to keep doing so in a new setting starting next fall!

   After a DAAD Grant for a year of research in Germany at the University of Trier, I am back at Georgetown completing my dissertation titled "Practicing the Spatial Imagination of Accelerated Globalization in Contemporary German-language Novels," which I will defend this May. As for my plans upon completion of my PhD, I am applying for positions at colleges/universities throughout the country, so that I will hopefully be able to continue teaching at the college level and researching topics related to German language, literature and culture. And of course, I hope that sooner rather than later I am able to lead a study abroad adventure to a German-speaking region of the world.

   All my best,    Brooke

Dear Brooke,
   We are all so proud of you.  I hope you can come and visit sometime.  All good things as you complete your PhD work and plan for your future!

John Herbeck '90 Visits Frau Paeske in Salzburg

Fr. Mark:

     I found Frau Paeske. We spent a few hours together in her dining room and she is just as giddy and friendly as always. We shared laughs and also a couple of tears. Herr Paeske died a few years ago, and her daughter Birgitte died just a couple of years ago from some type of brain/head issue, maybe cancer.
     She currently has one student, from a former Yugoslav republic.   She pulled out her photo album, and I wrote in it for the third time. The last time I had visited was in the spring of 2001.
     She has built up quite the legacy and I feel rather compelled to do something while she is still around, and maybe connect those who have stayed with her/them. She wants visits and is still sharp as a tack. I am hoping to visit her again, but don't know when I can make it back.   I am trying to connect with her other daughter and son-in-law via email.
     I have some insights and ideas about the Salzburg Progam and would love to come to St. John's and catch up with you, and continue to be an ambassador for German language and study abroad programs! For me it all started with you, Fr. Mark, and so thank you for that! I copied Mike Koalska on this message.

All the best,
John Herbeck
SJU '90

Professor Lisa Ohm Reviews Book about Childhood under Nazism

Mahlendorf, Ursula. The Shame of Survival: Working Through a Nazi Childhood. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 2009. Cloth, 376 pp., $29.95. Paper, 376 pp., $21.95. «www.psupress.org »

   "Du bist nichts, dein Volk ist alles." In her new book, Ursula Mahlendorf, eighty-one, records a lifetime spent unpacking bit by bit that Nazi slogan embedded in her psyche as a child.
   Born in 1929 in the small German quarry town of Stehlin in Silesia, now Strzelin in Poland, young Ursula became a member of the Jungmädel, the Nazi youth organization for girls aged ten-fourteen, and then the Bund Deutscher Mädel [BDM], the Hilter Youth organization for girls fourteen-eighteen. She happily hiked with Hitler youth groups and dutifully collected winter clothing for German soldiers while she was being prepared to eventually teach in newly established German schools in the conquered territories to the East. Mahlendorf, Professor emerita in the University of California-Santa Barbara's German Department, earned the Ph.D. in German Literature from Brown University in 1958 and lives in the U.S. Once she started her memoir, she wrote quickly, finishing her first draft in six months. Although the flow of writing suggests she was able to "write herself free," she says that a sense of shame still haunts her today.
   Mahlendorf's book provides a necessary perspective on the Third Reich beyond the present dominance of Holocaust and resistance narratives. She describes her personal experiences growing up in Nazi Germany, freely admitting that she most likely would have become a Nazi despite her objections to certain aspects of the Party's program (26). The war's end in May 1945 ended her nazification process a few months before her sixteenth birth-day. She records how the Nazi system exploited her youth: her longing for a better education than the class system then allowed, her youthful desire to make a difference in someone's life, and her natural love of country and willingness to serve.
    Young Mahlendorf, in the face of her father's death, the war, illness, growing deprivation, loss, and resettlement, focused on the narrow goal of getting an education, which, she realized early, could not be stolen, lost, or left behind. Reading voraciously, she permitted herself to feel emotions generated by poetry, nature, and music, but buried her emotions of fury, resentment, regret, distrust, shame, grief, and loss deep below a shell of "numbness and toughness" (233).
   During the decades after World War II, few if any were prepared to see the Germans-even youngsters like Mahlendorf-as victims of Hitler and the Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, known simply as the Party since all other political parties had been outlawed. Mahlendorf argues that her experiences in the Hitler Youth, like the experiences of other perpetrators and bystanders, are highly instructive and must be studied as carefully as the stories of victims and resisters have been. For young women, she writes, "leadership in the Jungmädel, the BDM, and the labor Service opened up a wide spectrum of entirely new careers with prospects of rising in the HJ hierarchy all the way to the highest level, the Reichsjugendführung, the national youth leadership" (113). Those opportunities fueled her desire to compete and succeed.
   Two earlier accounts of HJ activity, Hans Peter Richter's I was there (1962) and Melita Maschmann's Account Rendered: A Dossier on my Former Self (1963) were important to Mahlendorf's Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Nearly a decade older than Mahlendorf, Maschmann was a BDM leader and later worked in the Labor Service in Polish territories occupied by and then incorporated into Hitler's Germany. Reading Maschmann in the 1990s, Mahlendorf writes that she "shuddered" when she realized what her own leadership role might have been in "Germanizing the conquered east" (166, 131).
   By placing her personal experiences growing up in the 1930s and 1940s in the wider socio-historical, political, and cultural context of the period and its aftermath, Mahlendorf's compelling memoir provides great value for students of history and social sciences as well as literature at the high school, university, or adult-learner level. Her story is well-written, many-sided, thoughtful, and honest. Mahlendorf's absorbing and powerful memoir reminds us how easily the goodwill and patriotism of the young can be exploited by a government to immoral ends, and how long-lasting and challenging the effects are for youngsters caught up in a political movement.

Anna Lisa Ohm
College of Saint Benedict
Saint John's University

Kristine Bornus to Attend Summer Session in Trier, Germany, through a Georgetown University Program

  

Congratulations Kristine on being accepted to this presitigous summer program.
What a great way to move ahead in German Studies! We are proud of you.

Summer Term in Germany through Georgetown University 

Andrea Terhaar '02, German and Art History Double Major, Lives in Belgium, Tells of Her Adventures Abroad.

Hope you and the German department are well! It's so nice to hear from you, I think often of my wonderful German and Art History professors at CSBSJU.  I definitely have used my German major in a variety of capacities since graduating in 2002:
   2002-03 - I spent a year teaching in Vienna Austria with the Fulbright program - did much traveling in the meanwhile, and really came into fluency over the course of the year.
   Although I was a German and Art History major at CSBSJU, my experience teaching abroad revealed my love for teaching in general, so I went back the the UMN (mpls campus) for my Masters of Education in English. I taught at the secondary level in the Centennial District (Lino Lakes) for almost seven years - primarily English (which evidently German language studies have often come up when reading Shakespeare, etc). During my tenure there, and due to my German major, I was given the opportunity to teach one semester of German as a fill in for a teacher who had to suddenly leave the district. It was a wonderful semester of beginning Deutsch! Lots of fun, grammar, culture, role plays throughout the class.
   Last spring 2011, my husband and I moved to Brussels, Belgium and I am now teaching in one of the European Schools here, as an English and Ethics teacher to all the kids of EU consulates. I am using my German daily in a number of ways - directly with students and fellow colleagues, in translating Dutch (quite similar to German), traveling to Germany, and also in my every day research/reading/pleasure. I am now learning French, since it is the primary language in Brussels, however feel so at home when I am able to use my German, to me, such a wonderful and familiar language. I'm very happy to have been a German major and continue to read, speak and enjoy using it!
   Please give my regards to the German department faculty and students. Please feel free to pass on the link to our blog!  http://andreajohnbelgium.com/

Alles Gute im neuen Jahr,
Andrea (Terhaar) Krueger
arterhaar@yahoo.com