Das 20. Jahrhundert in Bewegung(en) | The 20th Century in Movement(s) (GRMN0500)

In this course, designed to help students to bridge the gap from intermediate to advanced German, I introduce students to German twentieth century culture. Through learning about the various artistic, social, political and theoretical movements of the past century, I also make students familiar with comparative methods of analysis: how do ideas of "movement," and conversely of "arrest" or "stagnation" inform our thinking about social change and historical progress? How is "movement" - or a lack thereof - staged and refracted, broken down and reanimated in art, literature, and theory? 

Using various digital collaboration tools, such as Hypothesis for text annotation, Scalar for film annotation, and even just the discussion boards on Canvas (a platform with which I have extensive experience), my aim was to facilitate engagement and discussion beyond the classroom. I also consider this an inclusive teaching method, as some students perform better without the pressure of social attention and expectations.

We started off the semester with short texts by Walter Benjamin (Das Karussell, Zum Planetarium) and Rilke (Der Panther), to get students to reflect on the idea of progress as linear by contrasting them with the motifs of 'repetition' and cyclical types of movement. Exposing students to short, but ambitious readings right at the start often gives them a boost of confidence that carries through the semester. This set us up to read longer pieces, such as Der Fortschritt by Karl Kraus and excerpts from Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities, which also questioned the idea of progress as occurring in a linear fashion, or occurring at all. Dealing with texts from the beginning of the century, and notably before the catastrophe of the First World War had happened, this was an opportunity to draw on the ways in which the beginning of a century stimulates the imagination about the future, and was characterized by anxieties about looming catastrophes, amplified by technological progress. Learning to distinguish between technological progress on one hand, and other types of progress, such as social and institutional ones, resonated with many student's misgivings about our present historical moment, and the crises of our age.

A highlight in the course was a module designed around Siegfried Kracauer's essay The Mass Ornament. By reading this dense and highly relevant text, student's learn about the intellectual and political movement of Critical Theory and the origins of the Frankfurt School in their historical and intellectual context. But more importantly, they learn about methods of  interpreting and discussing what Kracauer terms "surface phenomena:" in this case the phenomenon of mass choreographies, from smaller performances by groups like the Tiller Girls to spectacular stadium events, which became popular in the 1920s. Through close reading and contextualizing, students are able to make connections between the surface phenomena in question, and broader discourses surrounding the individual and mass psyche, as well as fundamental questions of what kind of process "history" is: to what extent are we, as humans, in control of our own history, and to what extent does it appear to be motivated by other forces? What are these other forces, and how are they conceptualized -- historically? 

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