German in the Humanities
Karen R. Achberger
St. Olaf College
This article originally appeared in Die Unterrichtspraxis, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1993. It is distributed here with permission of the copyright holders, Karen Achberger and the American Association of Teachers of German.
The central concept of the AFLC (Applied Foreign Language Component) program at St. Olaf College is its first word, APPLIED.[1] Here students are given an opportunity to apply the skills they have been developing in the foreign language sequence required for graduation. Further application of foreign language skills would otherwise be limited to study abroad or a few additional courses in culture or literature within the foreign language department. While these three options are generally reserved for foreign language majors, the AFLC program allows non-majors as well to use their foreign language skills in courses in other disciplines that they would be taking in any case to fulfill general education or major requirements. In fact, only about 50% of the students in the German track of AFLC humanities courses at St. Olaf have been German majors.
Among the 18 different courses that have been offered since spring semester 1990 in the AFLC program at St. Olaf, there have been two humanities courses taught in German: "Modern German History" and "Essentials of Christian Theology." Both are intermediate-level courses that students may take to fulfill graduation requirements. The history course was offered in Spring 1990 and in Spring 1991; the religion course was offered in Fall 1991 and in Spring 1992.
In discussing the history course, which I taught during both semesters with Eric Weitz of the St. Olaf history department, I would like to focus briefly on five aspects of the experience: the course requirements, class format, readings, study guides, and students.
Course Requirements
Although students in all AFLC courses are required to complete 50% of the reading in the foreign language, the type of work required of the students has varied from course to course.[2] In every case, however, students receive two separate grades for their work in the English and foreign language tracks respectively. While students in the German track of the history course were graded solely on the basis of their participation in the weekly German discussions, the German track of the religion course required weekly writing assignments in German, as well as two oral interviews in German on the subject matter of the course. In both courses, students were given weekly questions in German to be answered in preparation for class discussion. In the religion course, students also answered one of the questions each week in writing.
Format
Before the applied foreign language component was added to the German history course, it had been organized on a lecture format, with a question and answer period following most of the lectures. The German readings introduced a greater need for explanation and more interaction between professor and students, which shifted the format toward informal discussion in the weekly German sections. Before long, the discussion format made its way to the English lecture sections as well.
One of the important advantages of this kind of team-teaching arrangement is that the students have in each of the two disciplines one professor as their peer: the German professor is a fellow student of history, and the historian is their fellow German student. Both professors accompany the students through all class meetings and are therefore able to serve as learner role models, making mistakes and grappling with the material as they resist the urge for perfection. In our case, I found myself asking naive questions about German history, while my colleague in history made occasional grammatical mistakes when he spoke German, much to the delight of the class, many of whom were even more proficient than he was-- or at least considered themselves to be. The presence at all times of at least one imperfect fellow-learner in their midst encouraged students to risk making mistakes themselves and thus become more actively involved in class meetings. At the same time, students were able to observe an established historian demonstrating for them the value of knowing German.
Readings
The course was set up with some common readings for all students, as well as separate readings for the English and German tracks. The German readings were a combination of primary, secondary, and literary sources. Students found the German secondary readings the most difficult and the least enjoyable. Although a healthy mix of both primary and secondary sources is optimal, many of the secondary sources could be replaced with primary and literary sources the second time the course was offered. In German history, English-language scholarship is well developed, and any number of important German works have been translated. The secondary sources probably developed the students' vocabulary more than either literary or primary sources since the students normally have not encountered the terminology of German historiography in their language classes. Also, the degree of abstraction and hypotaxis of a historian like Andreas Hillgruber is unmatched in German language and literary texts (perhaps with the exception of Heinrich von Kleist).
Primary sources and works we read in conjunction with an English translation clearly worked best. I would like to discuss a few instances:
1. On the Revolution of 1848, students read both "Die Grundrechte des Deutschen Volkes" in German and the English translation,"The Fundamental Rights of the German People." Some of the best discussions of the semester ensued when students attempted to grasp such weighty concepts as "Volk" and "Nation." We all discovered-- after having read the original German-- that the English translation, taken from the classic volume developed for Columbia University's civilization course, simplifies and streamlines what in the German is deliberately ambiguous. The translation conflates into the one term "citizen," for example, a variety of German designations, including "Angehöriger," and "Bürger" in their many modifications: "Staatsangehöriger," "Staatsbürger," "Gemeindebürger," "Reichsbürger," etc. The Frankfurt Parliament in 1848 apparently left some of the terminology deliberately vague in the face of its difficulty defining just who was to be a citizen of the German nation. The German terms allowed us to see at work the intricate process of first ascertaining one's local or regional identification before determining whether one could then be a citizen of the Reich. Combining the study of history and the study of language in this way provided an opening for the class to explore issues which neither of the disciplines alone would have made accessible. In this interdisciplinary context, therefore, students experienced firsthand the difficulties of translation and the inevitable interpretation inherent in the translator's choices. At the same time, students were better able to sense the problematic issue of defining nationhood and citizenship in the 19th century. In this way, students experience how their understanding of German history deepens as their mastery of the German language increases.
2. Students were also able to compare a translation with the original when we read Goethe's Werther. All students read the entire work, The Sorrows of the Young Werther, in English, and the German track students read several excerpts in the original German. Here students were able to notice, for instance, the inadequate rendering of the German word "Gesellschaft" in Werther's letter of May 17th:"Ich habe allerlei Bekanntschaft gemacht, Gesellschaft habe ich noch keine gefunden." [In the translation of Michael Hulse: "I have made all manner of acquaintance but have yet to meet with any society."] While this might be a formally correct translation, our students were quick to realize that they do not associate with the term "society" any of the close sharing and belonging to a circle of friends and soul-mates that Werther was yearning for. "Society" does not quite carry the weight and richness of meaning of the German word "Gesellschaft."
3. Another opportunity for students to observe that words carry meanings in one language that their so-called "equivalents" in another language do not carry is provided in Wilhelm von Humboldt's writings on education. Here students can appreciate the importance of "Kultur und Bildung" in the German context and observe that the English translation as "culture and education" does not carry the same connotations. Students begin to grasp the importance Germans have attached to education as reflected in the term "Bildungsbürgertum" and realize that none of the ethical connotations are suggested by rendering this as the "educated middle class."
As students realize that reading a text in the original language brings greater depth and accuracy of understanding than relying on English translations, their attitudes towards language change. While students do learn some German vocabulary in the course, their primary gain is not an increase in German language proficiency, but a deeper understanding of the discipline History and an appreciation of the power of language to shape our ideas and values, our "Weltanschauung," as Whorf and Sapir termed it. Having experienced this, they leave the course-- whether they have taken the English or the German track-- firmly convinced of the value of language study. They have experienced firsthand that knowing a foreign language is indispensable to a deep and accurate understanding of both the particular culture and the discipline of History.
4. Since the course is focused less on the "narrative of political history" than on the cultural and social history of modern Germany, students read on the Industrial Revolution, for instance, excerpts from working-class autobiographies, which are available in the Rowohlt collection, Proletarische Lebensläufe, edited by Wolfgang Emmerich.[3] There is now a volume with this kind of material available in English, so students could have access to this content in a history course without knowing German.[4] However, as a number of students commented, reading it in the original made it seem more "real" to them. The fact that these autobiographies had obviously been edited and the colloquial, working-class German made grammatically "correct," opened up another issue of content: namely, the use to which these kinds of autobiographies had been put by the two groups that supported their publication, the Social Democratic Party and the middle-class social reformers.
5. On the Nazi era, we read excerpts from oral history interviews done with Ruhr miners in the 1970s and 1980s, Lutz Niethammer's Die Jahre weiß man nicht, wo men die heute hinsetzen soll.[5] This kind of work is rarely found in English (though as it happens, this volume is currently being translated). Besides opening up interesting questions about social life in the Third Reich and the problem of historical memory, this material gave students an opportunity to encounter not edited versions, but unadulterated colloquial German, which provided a new experience for them. Students also gained first-hand experience with spoken colloquial German by listening to cassette recordings of interviews with citizens of Berlin, recalling what life had been like in the Weimar Republic. For this we used the media package, Große Politik und Alltagsleben: Meine Heimatstadt Berlin 1900-1945, which includes photos, texts, and taped interviews.[6] Even if this kind of oral history were available in English translation, the immediacy and authenticity would be lacking.
6. Students in the religion course discovered not only instances where puns had been lost or where a translation had failed to render the full range of connotation in the original German, but several mistranslations as well. In Karl Barth's Die Menschlichkeit Gottes, for instance, the line "Ihr Menschen seid Gottes"[7] is rendered as "You men are gods"[8]--which, of course, is doubly incorrect and should read: "You people are of God." A page later, the same translator also renders "noch und noch" as "gradually," apparently having misread it as "nach und nach." Clearly, the students realize the risks of relying on a translation.
Study Guides
In this area, both the organization and amount of detail vary from course to course. In each course, students received from time to time as part of the study guide a written pre-reading explanation of the German text ("Vorbereitungslektüre"). While the religion course provided extensive glosses and discussion questions on the German readings, students in the history course were given study guides that were usually divided into three sections:
I. Fragen zum Text - a set of 5-10 specific content questions, e.g., "Was waren die Ziele Friedrichs II. für Preußen: (a) kulturpolitisch; (b) außenpolitisch; (c)innenpolitisch?"
II. Ausdrücke zur Definition - a few central terms or quotations taken from the reading, e.g., "Staatsvenwaltung" or "Emporkömmling" or "der Weiseste und Gerechteste im Lande."
III. Themen zur Diskussion - one or two general topics for discussion, e.g., "Inwiefern haben die spezifischen historischen Bedingungen, die im 18. Jahrhundert in Preußen existierten, zur Entstehung des "aufgeklärten Absolutismus" geführt?
Students
While it is still too soon to make a reliable comparison between the English and German tracks, early data seem to suggest that students in the German track are more highly motivated than those taking the course without the German component and that they appear to learn more about the subject matter than students in the English track. The data also suggest that students' German language skills are somewhat enhanced and that they are encouraged to continue their study of German. It is also too early to tell whether the AFLC program will encourage other students to continue with their foreign language study, which has been one of the primary goals of the program.
We had optimistically anticipated that perhaps one-third to one-half the students in the German history class would enroll in the German track. After registration, we found, to our surprise, only one student in the English track: 13 of the 14 in the German track the first year, and 4 of 5 the second year. Actually, only 3 of 5 were officially enrolled in the German track the second year, although the fourth student knew German very well and participated in some of our German sessions as an auditor.
I would like to conclude with two student comments from the written evaluation forms in the history course:
1. From the first year (1990): "The German mentality is reflected in the language. I could really see parallels between the rigidity of this language and, for example, German 'Gehorsamkeit,' 'Pflichtbewußtsein'-- and historical events. Language is reality!-- or reflects how certain folks perceive it. Anyhow, it makes a difference if you understand the German language-- then you automatically have insight into their behavior. Anyway-- reading in German was refreshing and added a lot!"
2. From the second year (1991): "It was very helpful to read things like Mein Kampf, which was originally written in German, in the actual language in which it was written, and to see the terms like 'Lebensraum,' etc., which have been incorporated into the English speaking historian's understanding, actually used."
Both student comments reflect a certain excitement and amazement at having actually used their knowledge of the German language to gain access to a special understanding of German culture. Indeed, we were all somewhat amazed at how well the students were able to comprehend difficult texts that I had suspected would lie beyond their language capabilities. How was it that students were able to function linguistically in a history course at a level far beyond that which would have been expected of them in a German course?
The key might be summed up under the terms "motivation" and "context": In explaining to myself and others the success of the AFLC program, I have often referred to the high quality of St. Olaf students, their excellent language preparation and extensive foreign study experiences, their high motivation. The motivation, however, seems to stem as much from the structure of the program as from the students themselves. By offering students readings that are intellectually stimulating, the fact that these texts also happen to be linguistically demanding does not seem to present a problem.
The texts make sense in the context of the course. The lectures serve to situate them historically and give students a sense of what to expect, with the result that their reading is focused and their direction not easily encumbered by grammatical stumbling blocks. If students want to read the texts, they will find a way to understand them. Giving students a meaningful context in which to place the readings seems to make them both more interesting and easier to comprehend.
In contrast to traditional content-based instruction in the foreign language classroom, e.g. a historical survey or reading course taught in the language department, it is the content of the discipline and not the structure of the language that determines the selection and sequence of the readings. They are organized not according to language difficulty, as, for example, in the Hueber volume, Reading German History. A German Reading Course for Beginners, [9] but rather they are integrated into the existing history course. It is less an anticipation of grammatical structures and progressive vocabulary building, than a discussion of historical context which frames and defines the students' interaction with the texts.
This is language in the service of another discipline, it is true. And it is also an interdisciplinary adventure which gives language teaching new relevance.
Notes
[1] For a description of the St. Olaf model, see Beverly T. Watkins, "Program at St. Olaf College Offers Students Incentives to Make Foreign Languages More Than a Requirement," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 28, 1990, A19. See also Wendy Allen, Keith Anderson, León Narváez, "Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum: The Applied Foreign Language Component," Foreign Language Annals 25 (1992). See also Jon N. Moline, "On Making Foreign Languages Our Own," Humanities, Nov./Dec. 1990, 36-38. See also Keith O. Anderson, "The Applied Foreign Language Component in the Humanities and the Sciences," Language and Content: Discipline-Based Approaches to Language Study, Proceedings of Brown University Conference, Oct. 18-20, 1991.
[2] Reading is estimated based on time spent in preparation, not on number of pages to be read.
[3] Proletarische Lebensläufe. Autobiographische Dokumente zur Entstehung der zweiten Kultur in Deutschland,ed. Wolfgang Emmrich (Reinbeck: Rowohlt, 1974).
[4]The German Worker: Working Class Autobiographies from the Age of Industrialization, trans. and ed. Alfred Kelly (U. of California Press, 1987).
[5] "Die Jahre weiß man nicht. Wo man die heute hinsetzen soll": Faschismus-Erfahrungen im Ruhrgebiet: Lebensgeschichte und Sozialkultur im Ruhrgebiet 1930-1960, vol. 1, ed. Lutz Niethammar (Berlin: J.H.W. Dietz, 1983).
[6]. Große Politik und Alltagsleben: Meine Heimatstadt Berlin 1900-1945, ed. Wolfgang Bauernfeind and Helmut Kopetzky (Frankfurt/Main: Medien-Cooperative Network, 1990).
[7] Karl Barth, Die Menschlichkeit Gottes, 23, line 189.
[8] Karl Barth, The Humanity of God, 60.
[9] Karin Hermann, Reading German History: A German Reading Course for Beginners (Munich: Max Hueber), 160 pp. See also the companion volume, Key and Study Tips, 48 pp.