German Cinema
Fall 2012

ALS-A, HWC, Counts toward German major and Film Studies concentration
Taught in English, German FLAC available

 

In this course, we examine 20th century German history through eight filmic masterpieces, beginning with the eerie German expressionist classics of the silent era following World War I, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1919) and Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors(Murnau, 1922); the early "talkies" The Blue Angel (von Sternberg, 1930), and M.(Lang, 1931); moving from the "haunted screen" of Weimar cinema to the hauntingly beautiful, "fascinating fascism" of Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, 1936); and finally to the post-Holocaust struggles with the collective remembering (and forgetting!) of the Nazi era in The Murderers are Among Us (Staudte, 1946), The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1979), and The Counterfeiters (Ruzowitzky, 2008).

For students with German 232 or the equivalent, the .25-credit German FLAC section (Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum) meets once a week to discuss aspects of the films in German. FLAC allows you to use your foreign language skills in courses taught in English across the College. See:  http://www.stolaf.edu/depts/flac for information on FLAC Certification.

Contact Karen R. Achberger (krach@stolaf.edu) for questions on the course itself or the German FLAC component.