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(NYU Gallatin) Berlin: Capital of Modernity
Some of the most thrilling, momentous, and terrible events of the 1900's occurred in Berlin, and today its streets, buildings, and cultural monuments offer tales of warning and inspiration to the present century. This three-week course will take in many of the sights and sounds of old and contemporary Berlin, but our course will focus on ... read more
Some of the most thrilling, momentous, and terrible events of the 1900's occurred in Berlin, and today its streets, buildings, and cultural monuments offer tales of warning and inspiration to the present century. This three-week course will take in many of the sights and sounds of old and contemporary Berlin, but our course will focus on the involvement of twentieth-century, Berlin-based politicians, activists, artists, architects, bohemians, writers, and intellectuals with the causes, experience, and consequences of World War II.
Berlin's streets, buildings, memorials, and cultural monuments offer cautionary tales about the folly of nationalist ambition; inspiring sagas of intellectual and physical courage; cold testimonials of crime and retribution; lyrical ballads of brutal honesty; personal records of hope and despair. From one perspective, all of these narratives are episodes in an epic whose grand and central scene is World War II and that is the point of view to be adopted in this three-week interdisciplinary seminar set in Berlin. Our period of study begins just before the outbreak of World War I and ends during the astonishing building boom of the post-Wall 1990s and early 2000s. Less
