GR 333X - In the Shadow of the Berlin Wall: Germany from Cold War to Reunification, 1961-1990

Lecture Hours: 3
Lab Hours: 0
Credit Hours: 3

This course will address the issues that weighed on the minds of the Germans during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Themes will include coming to terms with the Nazi past, tensions of the Cold War (including Western integration and Ostpolitik), the economic and social integration of guest workers and the images that the two Germanies projected to the world. Readings (in English) will be taken from journalists and artists who lived during the time, including Heinrich Böll, Fritz Stern (“Five Germanies I Have Known”), Rudolf Augstein, editor-in-chief of Spiegel magazine and Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, managing editor of the weekly “Die Zeit”. We will also examine eyewitness accounts of important events. This course does not include a foreign language component and cannot be used toward a language requirement for language credit.