All things must End

Ah yes, the final blog post it is indeed very welcomed. As a precursor, this has indeed been a fun and interesting class and if I were to fail (for some god-forsaken reason) I would gladly retake. Through the class we sampled many cultural slices of the German whole.

We learned the basic of the German political system and the various parties that make it up. For my purposes, I examined the Christian Democratic Union and their fearless leader Angela Merkel—who really is a person of interest. The class as well examined each of the 16 German states and delved into the unique qualities of each.  The next, and I feel a very significant portion of this class, was the book All Quiet on the Western Front. This essentially was a war book; however, it was not focused on the war itself. This book instead examined very human properties of war and looked into the lives of the so called “lost generation”. In the literary work we saw how trench warfare affected the lives of those involved and what would, more often than not, become of them. It was at this turning point in the class with which we began to focus on the ‘work’ related aspects of Germany’s history. We looked at slices of the past centuries and examined things such as business, industry, and the sciences. He we got a glimpse of how Germany has really contributed very much to the modern world and continues to be at the forefront of its cutting edge developments. We saw that Germany was an industrial force in the late 1800s to pre WWII and that they had actually been the world’s 2^nd largest exporter of steel (which, I didn’t know). Furthermore, many useful inventions came from Germany that are still at large in the modern world today such as tooth paste.

Moving forward, we saw that throughout Germany there have been tons of artistic leaders born from the German soils. For example, the well-known Bach wrote his greatest works in Leipzig and Goethe wrote many literary masterpieces befitting to a new age of writing. All in all, we see that Germany has prominence in both the sciences and the arts. We then moved to look at movies that Germany had to offer. Admittedly, I though all the movies we watched were good, but I really enjoyed the Baader-Meinhoff Komplex. This movie looked at the rebel force (RAF) that developed and thrived in Germany. It evolved from a protest and college aged kids who wanted to keep Germany from being reborn into the Nazi regime. We saw how the group changed and essentially, became a terrorist organization bent on causing chaos. I thought the movie was very well made with a lot of interesting highs and lows and great acting. Very recommended to see. Throughout watching these German movies I noticed that there are some subtle yet defined differences between German and American movies. It seems that German movies take on more analytical prospects vs. the American crash and bang type movies. From what I saw, German movies tend to have a very real aspect and are much less production focused than their American counterparts. Lastly, we closed up the cultural ride with a bit on German foods and drinks that you can’t buy at the State Fair. Many of the foods looked good, however, I would have to ultimately pass on anything with blood sausage (yikes).

So to tie it off. Great class. Enjoyed the presentation aspect of it and first-hand accounts of a German professor. It will be interesting to see what happens with Germany in the modern world and what else they will contribute to it. But before I digress, good class that gave a general overview of the German world. The only way I could truly continue my understanding of the German people would be to travel there myself. Maybe someday (when I have more money).

END