HISTORY OF GERMAN CULTURE MOD. 2

The course of History of German Culture (1 and 2, each of 6 credits, one in the first and one in the second year) belongs to the curriculum German Literature of the Master's Degree Programme European, American and Postcolonial Language and Literature. According to the aims of the Master's Degree and to the areas Literatures and Cultures, the course provides the ability to consolidate advanced critical and methodological instruments and a solid knowledge of literary texts and debates in their cultural and historical context.

Aims of this course are 1) the ability to analyse critically some of the most significant thoretical and literary texts of the cultural debates taken into consideration; 2) the comprehension of these debates in their cultural and historical context; 3) the ability to consolidate critical and methodological instruments; 4) the ability to comprehend and analyze texts and contexts in a competent and autonomous way; 5) the ability to perfectionate comunication and production in the original language by an accurate reading of the texts, the discussion and presentation in class; 6) the ability to write a well-discussed and formally correct scientific paper in German; 7) the ability to discuss with international lecturers in seminars and workshops about the subjects of the course.

Degree in Modern languages according to the rules of the course LLEAP.
Other students and Erasmus students are kindly asked to contact the lecturer.

"Immer noch rasiert Woyzeck seinen Hauptmann, ißt die verordneten Erbsen, quält mit der Dumpfheit seiner Liebe seine Marie [...]. Woyzeck ist die offene Wunde'. These are words with which the great German playwright Heiner Müller, in a short but incisive speech entitled 'Die Wunde Woyzeck', received the renowned Büchner Prize in 1985. In Müller's speech, great names from German literature are intertwined with crucial milestones and highly symbolic figures from the history of 20th century Germany and its revolutions: Kleist, Kafka and Lenz appear alongside Rosa Luxemburg and Ulrike Meinhof, in a path that leads through the assassination of Spartacist leaders, the battle of Stalingrad, the student uprisings up to the Berlin Wall, which would fall four years later.
Proposing a seminar-based work, the course intends to focus in particular on one of the main authors named by Müller, namely Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. As will be seen, due to its evocative power, symbolic force and revolutionary potential, Lenz's work has been taken up many times at moments of crisis and turning points in German culture, but also the figure of Lenz himself has taken on symbolic value at crucial moments in German history, coming to personify a kind of "open wound" in Müller's sense. After examining three fundamental Lenz's dramas (see reference texts), the course will look at these two aspects of reception first of all in Georg Büchner's work, in the well-known short story dedicated to Lenz and in two significant plays. The lectures will then move on to analyse three influential twentieth-century reinterpretations of Lenz's plays dealt with in the first part of the course: Brecht's Der Hofmeister (in the years immediately following the Second World War), Heinar Kipphardt's Die Soldaten (in the period of the student revolts) and Christoph Hein's Der neue Menoza (in the context of Lenz's revival in the last years of the GDR).

a.
1. Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Die Soldaten
Jakob Michael Reinhold: Der Hofmeister
Jakob Michael Reinhold: Der neue Menoza
texts available online: http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Lenz,+Jakob+Michael+Reinhold
2. Georg Büchner: Lenz
Georg Büchner: Woyzeck
Georg Büchner: Leonce und Lena
texts available online: http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/B%C3%BCchner,+Georg
3. Bertolt Brecht: Der Hofmeister (in: Stücke. Bearbeitungen I, Suhrkamp 1984)
4. Christoph Hein: Der neue Menoza, in: Cromwell und andere Stücke, Aufbau Verlag 1981
5. Heinar Kipphardt: Die Soldaten, Suhrkamp 1968

b.
- Sigrid Damm: Vögel, die verkünden Land. Das Leben des Jakob Reinhold Lenz, Insel 1985
- Büchner-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung, Metzler 2015 (articles 5, 6, 7 in "I. Werk");
- J.M.R. Lenz-Handbuch, de Gruyter 2017 (chapters 1.1., 2.1., 3.17, 4.3 e 4.4.: Leben, Dramen und Dramenfragmente, Fragmentarische Schreibweisen, Lenz in der Literatur der DDR, Lenz in der Literatur der BRD).

An oral exam divided into different parts:

Module 1:
- a translation of a text passage from German into Italian;
- a general check about the whole programme;
- a brief presentation of a paper written in German (5-10 pages).
The interview is assessed with a score of 0-25, the paper with a score of 0-5.
Honours will be awarded in the presence of excellent knowledge and understanding with reference to the syllabus, excellent judgement and communication skills.

Module 2:
- a translation of a text passage from German into Italian;
- a general check about the whole programme;
- a brief presentation of a paper written in German (10-15 pages).
The interview is assessed with a score of 0-25, the paper with a score of 0-5.
Honours will be awarded in the presence of excellent knowledge and understanding with reference to the syllabus, excellent judgement and communication skills.

Lectures, seminar discussions, lectures in collaboration with international lecturers.
The programme includes a lecture by a professor from the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin as part of the Erasmus exchange with the same university (25th October 2024, Prof. Dr. Mark-Georg Dehrmann on Büchners Lenz)
A lecture on the stage fortune of Woyzeck by Maria Maderna (Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi in Milan) will also be part of the programme in October 2024.
A dedicated moodle platform will be available, where insights and materials will be uploaded, and used for communication with students.

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development