Course Description

German modernity is often associated with the industrialization of urban centers like Berlin and the technological development of city life. This course asks: what did modernity look like beyond and outside of Germany’s metropoles? What role did technology and media play in rural areas, and what did environmental transformation look like in the colonies, peripheries, and provinces? Focusing primarily on the period from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the postwar period (1950s), this course looks at the impact of new technologies and scientific developments on German literature, art, and culture. We will consider how “nature” helped to produce modern Germany, and how Germans—from a range of disciplines, ideologies, and periods—understood  their relationship to modern nature. Further topics include the changing relationship between the country and the city, the construction of tourist infrastructures, the emergence of Naturschutz, Heimatschutz, and Umweltschutz movements, as well as political and aesthetic concerns about energy production, pollution and deforestation, nuclear weapons, overseas colonial projects, and many other topics.

This course serves as an introduction to the intersection of ecocritical scholarship and German literature and culture. In addition to writers like Theodor Fontane, Alfred Döblin, and Christa Wolf, we will read theoretical and philosophical essays by Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Georg Simmel, and Friedrich Kittler. We will also read a range of sources from natural history, ecology, and environmental history, including Ludwig Klages, William Cronon, Rachel Carson, Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, and Jakob von Uexküll. We will also look at related artworks from the Bauhaus, mountain films, photography, and other media.