The rise of communicative language teaching and the over-emphasis on personalization and communication of one’s own thoughts and perspectives has often resulted in a narrowing of our pedagogical materials and deepening bifurcation of language programs. At its most extreme, this bifurcation results in lower-level courses on conversational German based on a textbook and upper-level culture courses featuring extensive reading of authentic (and, traditionally, literary and cultural) texts, which craft an artificially homogeneous “German” culture. Yet, in our classes, we found ourselves wanting more depth on history, politics and society — and the contradictions and disjunctures therein — in order to appeal to a broader range of students (often double majors in political science, international relations, history, economics or bench sciences).
This frustration was the beginning of Ekstase und Elend, a German-language cultural history book and accompanying multimedia open educational resource. This book is targeted to learners who have completed the B1 level and could be utilized in advanced undergraduate courses or even at the intermediate level if the program has a fairly intensive elementary sequence. While Ekstase und Elend provides a general overview that could be used in a survey course of the Wilhelmine era through the Merkel era, we have tried to keep it broad enough so that it could be utilized to provide cultural, historical, social and political context in support of other, more focused courses. We tried very hard to balance grand historical narratives with a more inclusive, and less monolithic, version of events. We are all teaching courses that deal with gender and sexuality, race, Jewish studies, migrants and the migrant experience, and more. These issues are more substantively discussed in Ekstase und Elend than in any other German-language cultural histories addressed to undergraduate students we are aware of.
The priorities and principles guiding this project were shaped by how we view German Studies today. This book serves two goals to that end. First, we sought to offer support to instructors as we broaden the horizon of our classes. Our research and our courses nowadays are just as likely to focus on women film directors or environmental studies as they are the Nobel prize winning authors of the 20th century. We wanted a book that includes the social and historical background so we can discuss all those topics in our courses. Second, we sought to problematize the monolithic image of “German culture” often presented in traditional course materials. While several elementary books have made this transition (Grenzenlos Deutsch, Impuls Deutsch, Augenblicke, Willkommen: Deutsch für alle), cultural histories (in English or German) geared toward the intermediate or advanced level do not treat in depth migrants’ experiences, the LGBTQ+ community, race and ethnic studies, and the problematic nature of national studies an sich. Our book is very much in line with the rearticulation of curricula around more inclusive principles and in many ways offers a path forward for programs using the elementary sequence resources listed above.
A guiding principle for the author team was to include—both in the text and the images—a more diverse version of events between roughly 1900 and the present. Culturally, we include references from Arthur Schnitzler to Christa Wolf, from Fritz Lang’s films to hits of the Neue Deutsche Welle like Extrabreit’s “Hurra, die Schule brennt.” We highlight the early queer rights movement pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld, and carry this theme through the larger revolution ushered in by the Stonewall Riots, and extend the discussion to the pathbreaking legislation creating marriage equality in the Merkel era. We acknowledge German colonialism, discuss the labor-based migration of the 1960s and 1970s “Gastarbeiter,” and the transformative contribution of Germans of Color from politicians such as Cem Özdemir and Karamba Diaby to authors such as May Ayim. We explicitly problematize the legal and cultural notions of “Germanness” throughout, from the National Socialist era, to recurring discussions of “Leitkultur,” to the problematic nature of German naturalization laws today. We prioritized this problematic, messy, and more accurate image of German cultural history to break down grand narratives and hope to induce in students a more critical assessment of their own interest in German Studies.
Todd Heidt, Knox College
Claudia Kost, University of Alberta
Emre Sencer, Knox College
Note from the editors: The German Studies Collaboratory’s entry for Ekstase und Elend includes a link to the companion website, a multimedia open educational resource.
