University of Pennsylvania

Conferences

September 27 - October 8, 2008

German-American Day and German-American Week in Philadelphia

For detailed information and schedule please visit: http://www.germanamericanday.org/index.html

October 3 - October 5, 2008

Sonne Sterne Mond

Live at The Franklin Institute Fels Planetarium! Cosmic Revue from Berlin, Germany. Live Music & Astronomy

Space Week 2008 & 325th German-American Day
The Franklin Institute, 222 North 20th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103-1194

For more information, please go to http://www.sostermoco.org/

November 6 - 9, 2008

Goethe and the Postclassical:
Literature, Science, Art, and Philosophy 1805-1815

Pittsburgh, PA

Contact: Clark Muenzer, Simon Richter, or Karin Schutjer

For detailed information, conference program and registration, please go to:
http://www.goethesociety.org/conference/index.html

Saturday, November 8, 2008
Christ Church (Old Swedes'), Upper Merion, 740 River Road, Swedesburg, PA 19405

Eight Annual New Sweden History Conference

Three New Sweden Artists: Gustavus Hesselius, Adolph-Ulrich Wertmueller & Paula Himmelsbach Balano

For detailed information, conference program and registration, please visit:
http://www.colonialswedes.org/Headlines/8thAnnNewSwHisCon.html

Lectures/Colloquia/Films

German Film Series

Thursday, September 11, 2008
6:00 pm , Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbucks)

German Undergraduate Advisory Board (GUAB) Kick Off Meeting
Monday, September 15, 2008
German Society of Pennsylvania, 611 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, PA

"Woyzeck"

Presented by Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe

$25.00, for information and tickets please call: 215-413-1318

Wednesday, September 17, 2008
5:00pm, 401 Fisher-Bennett Hall, 3440 Walnut Street

Screening of Nuremberg, The Nazis Facing Their Crimes

Christian Delage

Christian Delage is Visiting Professor of Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. He is a specialist in the films of Charlie Chaplin, World War II history, and films made by both the Nazis and the Allies at the liberation of the concentration camps. He spent five years working on Nuremberg Trial film footage and print archives. He published La verite par l'image de Nuremberg au proces Milosevic, and directed The Nazis Facing Their Crimes, which premiered in New York City in January 2007 at Lincoln Center. He has published other books on film and directed many documentaries. As policy advisor on the conservation and communication of the audiovisual archives when the French National Library was created, he concentrated his research and teaching on the role of image and film in the acquisition of knowledge and the writing of history. He will be a policy advisor on the filming of the Khmer Rouge Trial in 2008. He will teach Law and Film.

This program is made possible through the generous sponsorship and support of the Annenberg School of Communications, Law School, Jewish Studies Program Kutchin Seminar Series, Center for Global Communication Studies, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Cinema Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Event is free and open to the public. No RSVP necessary. Announcement at http://cinemastudies.upenn.edu/events/index.html
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Graduate Student / Faculty Colloquium
4:30 pm , Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbucks)
Presenters will be:

Dr. Gunnar Hindrichs, DAAD visiting professor, University of Heidelberg
"Metaphysik als Aesthetik"

Matt Handelman, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
"Franz Rosenzweig's Modern Mathematics"
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
12:00 pm, Grad Lounge in Fisher Bennett Hall, 3440 Walnut Street

Cinema Studies Colloquium

GERTRUD KOCH

Professor of Film Studies at the Free University of Berlin, Germany
Max Kade Visiting Professor at Penn Germanic Languages and Literatures

"Uneasy Pleasing - Film as Mass Art
Adorno, Cavell and Deleuze in comparison"
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
7:30 - 9:30 PM, Penn Hillel, Steinhardt Hall, 215 South 39th St.

"Anti-Semitism in the Freud Case Histories"

Freud, Franklin, and Beyond:
An Interdisciplinary Forum on Mental Health and Society

PRESENTER
Harold P. Blum, M.D.
Executive Director, The Sigmund Freud Archives
Former Editor-in-Chief, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association

DISCUSSANT
Benjamin Nathans, Ph.D.
Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History
University of Pennsylvania

Refreshments will be served.
Please see our website for info on upcoming events: http://www.med.upenn.edu/psych/PCOP.html

Major funding was provided by the Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation & the Foundation of the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia.

Part of the Jewish Studies Kutchin Faculty Seminar Series, and sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania and the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia.
Saturday, September 27 and Sunday, September 28, 2008
United German Hungarian Club, 4666 Bristol Road, Oakford, PA 19053

Bavarian Oktoberfest

For information and tickets please call 215-942-7411
Saturday, September 27, 2008

38th Annual German-American Steuben Day Parade

Parade will begin at 2:00 pm on Frankford Avenue (between Welsh Road and Knorr Street), Northeast Philadelphia, PA

For more information please visit: http://www.steubenparade.com/
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
5:00 pm, room 737 Williams Hall, 7th floor

GUAB (German Undergraduate Advisory Board) Meeting

If you cannot make this meeting and would still like to participate in GUAB and/or this weekend's events, please contact Leah Volger: leahvolger@gmail.com
Wednesday - Thursday, October 1 - 2, 2008
Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

German Experimental Women Filmmakers

UTE AURAND - MILENA GIERKE - RENATE SAMI

Films from Three Decades

Curated by Karen Beckman in collaboration with the filmmakers
Wednesday, October 1, 6:30 pm

Making Apple Juice

(Milena Gierke, S8 Film, without sound, color, edited in the camera, 1993, 2 ½ mins)

Apples are prepared for making juice by washing and squeezing them. Close-ups create the impression that the apples are moving of their own accord.

Toads

(Milena Gierke, S8 Film, without sound, colour, edited in the camera, 1997, 6 mins)

Images of a stream in southern France: it’s the toads' mating season. Movement on the water surface distorts the toads, sometimes making them unrecognizable, bringing two different levels of perception into the action.

OH! The 4 Seasons

(Ute Aurand in collaboration with Ulrike Pfeiffer, 16mm, 1988, 20 mins)

Aurand and Pfeiffer filmed each other at four famous sites in Europe: walking in a summer dress through the snow in front of the Reichstag in Berlin; spinning a young boy again and again through the air in Red Square in Moscow; climbing on a hot day into the waterfall at the Place de la Concorde in Paris; and, as two angels in London, walking through the night of the City. The film begins with a text by Jonas Mekas about improvisation and is edited in the camera.

Wanderings. Film diary 1975-1985

(Renate Sami, 2005, MiniDv, 38 minutes)

Several portraits of friends, women and men, the Polish Market on Potsdamer Platz, the Wall, a picnic in the Park, on the road in Italy, Turin in Winter, a poem by Cesare Pavese. The film was originally shot on Super8, was then transmitted to MiniDV and left without sound to be punctuated here and there with some short pieces of music.
Thursday, October 2, 6:30 pm

The Protection Foil

(Renate Sami, 16mm, 1983. 8 mins, b/w)

This film was produced as part of a project with films against the atomic threat. It consists of one shot with a young man who tries to wrap himself into a foil and a singer who accompanies herself on a children`s bandoneon.

When You See A Rose

(Renate Sami, 1995, 16mm, 4.5 mins, color)

Under the spell of Cathy Berberian`s voice, scraps of melodies and poems in my head, in love with spring and summer`s flowers, I walked through streets and gardens, pastures, fields and forests, and by the end of that summer 1995 I had a little film which ends somewhat melancholically with some chords of Gustav Mahler`s “Traveling Journeyman`s Songs.”

The Butterfly in Winter

(Ute Aurand in collaboration with Maria Lang, 2006, 30 mins, 16mm)

The filmmaker Maria Lang reads out of her diary, which she has been writing since 1991, after her move to the countryside to take care of her mother. Fourteen years later, Ute Aurand began filming Maria's daily nursing of her mother, now 96 years old. Every morning Maria opens the windows, places the mother in the wheelchair, is washing and dressing her, combs and braids her long white hair. It is repeated day after day, but every day is different.

Every Hour I, February-April 1991

(Milena Gierke, 1991, color, silent, 6 mins, 30 sec.)

“For three months, I filmed a portrait of myself every hour, including my surroundings in the picture. The hours when I was sleeping are shown by the use of black film.” Every Hour I is one of Gierke’s most well known works. Its central theme is the pure cinematic and conceptually conveyed question of the relationship between motion and stillness in relation to the mental and emotional development of each individual.

AIDS Walk in Central Park

(Milena Gierke, 1995, b&w, silent, 6 mins)

“After the participants in the AIDS Walk in Central Park were welcomed by applauding crowds, the human masses thinned out into the expanse of the park grounds. Live music played and people had picnics en masse. I observed the moods of the very diverse group of people who gathered on a sweltering day. As the day progressed, more and more of them began to move to the music, and finally began to dance.”

Stranger I

(Milena Gierke, 1990, colour, silent, 1 min. 30 sec)

“An older man walks slowly down the pavement. He doesn't notice that he’s being filmed. He appears to be from another world, completely in his own thoughts. Suddenly, without any apparent reason, he stops in his tracks. Other pedestrians continue, in their accustomed, hurried manner, past him.”

Stranger II

(Milena Gierke, 1992, colour, silent, 3 min.)

“A rubbish dump in the mountains of southern France. Camera editing results in a suggested but untold story.”

This program is made possible through the generous sponsorship and support of the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Fund in Cinema Studies, Slought Foundation, Department of History of Art, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Cinema Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
German Society of Pennsylvania, 611 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, PA

"Oktoberfest and Street Festival"

For more information and tickets please call 215-627-2332.
As part of the 325th German-American Day celebration, the German Society of Pennsylvania is pleased to announce two concerts by the renown Landesjugendorchester Rhein-Pfalz on

Sunday, October 5 at 3:00 pm. and again on
Monday, October 6 at 7:00 pm.

The orchestra, a 100 member group, will present works by Barber, Beethoven,Elgar and Mendelssohn at the German Society, 611 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia. The orchestra's upcoming engangements will take them to Harrisbug, Gettysburg, Baltimore, Washington, and New York City. This youth orchestra hails from the Palatine Region of Germany from whence came most of the early 18th century German settlers, at the invitation of William Penn.
Tickets, which are limited, are $20 and many be purchased by calling the German Society at 215-627-2332, or at the door 30 minutes before concert-time. For further information, call the German Society at the number indicated, or visit the Society's web-site at www.Germansociety.org.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
4:00 pm, Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbucks)

Christiaan Hart-Nibbrig, Professor of German at the University of Lausanne will speak on

"Love of Life - Five Moments of Love in Literature. Tema con variazioni."

Hart-Nibbrig is a regular contributor to Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Die Zeit. His many publications include: Verlorene
Unmittelbarkeit (1973), Ja und Nein (1974), Rhetorik des Schweigens (1981), Warum Lesen? (1983), Fragment und Totalität (Editor, 1984), Auferstehung des Körpers im Text (1985), Spiegelschrift (1987), Aesthetik des Todes (1989,
translated into Russian), Was heisst "Darstellen" (Editor, 1991), Übergänge (1995), and a translation of Walter Benjamin (2000).
His lecture will be in English.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
6:00 - 8:00 pm, Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbucks)

You are coordially invited to a talk given by

Dr. Anke Ortlepp, research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC
entitled

"German American Women's Activism: Construction Gender Roles and Ethnic Identity"

A reception will follow the talk.

For more information, please contact Marlene Stocks, 215.947.5490 or mhkstocks@verizon.net

The German-American Day Celebration Committee, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania and other area organizations, is planning ten days of activities to celebrate the beginning of organized German immigration to North America and the founding of Germantown in 1683. This commemoration will also reflect on the rich legacy of contributions made by German-speaking immigrants to Philadelphia. The events are scheduled for
September 27 through October 8, 2008.
~~Thursday, October 9, 2008~~- canceled
6:00 pm, Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbucks)

German Undergraduate Advisory Board (GUAB) Major/Minor discussion and Election for Positions in GUAB
Saturday, October 11, 2008
7:00 - 12:00 pm, United German Hungarian Club, 4666 Bristol Road, Oakford, PA 19053

Weinlesefest

For information and tickets please call 215-942-7411
Sunday, October 19, 2008
5:00 pm, Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbucks)

Movie/Discussion, tba

Presented by the German Undergraduate Advisory Board (GUAB)
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Graduate Student / Faculty Colloquium
4:30 pm , Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbucks)
Presenters will be:

Dr. Hans-Peter Kohler, Department of Sociology
"Causes and Consequences of Low Fertility in Europe"

Alexander Pichugin, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

"Der Welt sind solche Leute wie wir ein Dorn im Auge"

Images of the Outsider in the Writings of Ernst Kreuder
Saturday, October 25, 2008
schedule tba, Goethe Institute NYC

Fieldtrip

Organized by German Undergraduate Advisory Board (GUAB)
Sunday, October 26, 2008
3:00 pm, The German Society of Pennsylvania, 611 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123

The German Society of Pennsylvania is pleased to announce that the Wister Quartet will peform at the German Society of Pennsylvania. The program will be Haydn's Quartet in B flat Major, Opus 76, No. 4, Staneck's Quartet , "A Suite for Ursula", and Verdi's only and rarely performed String Quartet.

All members of the audience are invited to join in a post-concert reception in the Society's Ratskeller at no extra cost, which will also be attended by the artists, thus offering all an opportunity to partake in some delicious kaffee and kuchen, and to meet with the artists as well.

Tickets are $20, and may be purchased by calling the Society at 215-627-2332, or at the door. For more information, visit the Society's website at www.germansociety.org
Monday, October 27, 2008
5:30 pm, Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbucks)

A talk by
Professor Dr. Klaus Scherpe, Humboldt-Universitaet, Berlin

"Szenarien des Kolonialismus in den Medien des Kaiserreichs"

Klaus Scherpe, one of the leading Germanisten in Germany, has taught at the Freie Universiaet and at Humboldt in Berlin for many years. His methodological innovations (concepts of Postmodernism, Kulturwissenschaften) have enriched Germanistik, his exploration of "Das Fremde" added an anthropological dimension. His most recent studies of German colonialism (Mit Deutschland um die Welt: Eine Kulturgeschichte des Fremden, 2004) and the impact of the media are another step towards opening the field to cultural studies.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
4:00 pm, Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbucks)

An interpretive workshop on two poems by Hoelderlin: "Der gefesselte Strom" and "Ganymed" led by
Professor Ulrich Gaier, University of Konstanz and President of the Hoelderlin Society.

Professor Gaier is internationally renowned for his many publications on and editions of Herder, Goethe, and Hoelderlin. The workshop will be held in German. Copies of the poems are available in the Department of Germanic Languages and LIteratures, 745 Williams Hall and are readily accessible on the internet.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Cannstatter Volksfest Verein, 9130 Academy Road, Philadelphia, PA 19114

G.T.V. Almrausch 39th Oktoberfest
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
12:30 - 1:20 pm, Hillel, Steinhardt Hall, 215 South 39th Street

Yiddish Concert with Sherm Labovitz
accompanied at the piano by Alexander Botwinik

Admission free. Pizza and drinks served.

Sponsored by The University of Pennsylvania's Jewish Studies Program, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Hillel.
Tuesday November 11, 2008
5:00 pm, Class of 1955 Room, 2nd floor, Van Pelt Library, 3420 Walnut Street

"The Synagogue and European Jewish History"
David Sorkin

A lecture on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

David Sorkin is Professor of History and Frances and Laurence Weinstein Professor of Jewish Studies at the U. of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author The Transformation of Germany Jewry, 1780-1840 (1987), Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (1996), The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought (2000) and, most recently, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews and Catholics from London to Vienna (2008).

Part of the Jewish Studies Kutchin Faculty Seminar Series, and co-sponsored by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Department of History.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
5:00 pm, Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbucks)

Movie/Discussion, tba

Presented by the German Undergraduate Advisory Board (GUAB)
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
4:30 pm, Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbucks)

A lecture on
"Entrepreneurship and Foreign Languages"

by Vivian, Isaak, President, Magnum Group Inc.

Vivian Isaak is the Founder and President of Magnum Group, Inc., a Philadelphia-based translation company. Over the past twenty years, Ms. Isaak has produced, directed and edited hundreds of dubbed and subtitled programs. She has produced and edited documentaries and news spots for German TV stations and the ABC, NBC, CBS European bureaus. She has also translated and narrated news broadcasts of the Deutsche Welle for Latin American radio stations affiliated with the Voice of Germany. In 2008, The National Association of Professional and Executive Women named Vivian Isaak “Woman of the Year” in the Translation Services Category.

Her lecture will be in English.
Friday, November 21, 2008
German Society of Pennsylvania, 611 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, PA

Friday Film Fest: Die Faelscher

For more information and tickets please call 215-627-2332.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
3:00 pm, German Society of Pennsylvania, 611 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, PA

The German Society of Philadelphia presents the Wister Quartet on the Society’s 2008-09 “Wister and Mor!” concert series in the Albert and Hete Barthelmes Auditorium at the German Society’s headquarters, 611 Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia.

Members of the Wister Quartet (Nancy Bean, violin; Pamela Fay, viola; and Lloyd Smith, cello) will perform Alexander Glazunov’s refreshingly youthful “Alla Spagnuola” from “Five Novelettes”; Beethoven’s great string quartet in C Minor, Op. 18, No. 4; and Dvorák’s wonderfully evocative “American” string quartet in F Major, Op. 96.

Since its founding in 1987, the Wister Quartet has earned high praise from critics and audiences alike for its superb musicianship and memorable performances. Daniel Webster of The Philadelphia Inquirer has written that the Wister Quartet “has become the foremost [ Philadelphia] chamber music ensemble.” David Patrick Stearns of The Philadelphia Inquirer recently wrote, “Fierce, satisfying . . . . This was a long-cultivated group personality for which there should always be a place, no matter how busy the musical community becomes.”

Single tickets to this concert are $20. each and a full range of subscriptions to The German Society of Pennsylvania’s Concert Series is available. FOR RESERVATIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION, phone 215.627.2332, ext. 10 or email: info@germansociety.org
Monday, November 24, 2008
7:30 pm, Penn Hillel, Steinhardt Hall, 215 South 39th St.

A talk by
Dr. Dovid Katz

"The New Face of Holocaust Denial: The Case of Lithuania"

The intellectual and political establishments of the Baltic States, where the proportion of Jews murdered was the highest in Europe during the Holocaust (percentages ranging from the mid to high nineties), are dealing with their wartime genocide not by pursuing accuracy in history and reconciliation, but by constructing a new and subtle variety of Holocaust Denial. Professor Katz, a Yiddish professor who has lived in Vilnius, Lithuania for close to a decade, calls this new phenomenon Holocaust Obfuscation. Without denying a single death, Holocaust Obfuscation employs a complex of ruses ranging from blaming the victims to elevating Soviet tyranny (often misrepresented as Soviet-Jewish tyranny) to a purportedly equal genocide. While elements of Holocaust Obfuscation have been evident since the war, it has only now emerged as a state-sponsored policy, ably presented by elites, that is being pursued in the European Parliament via resolutions declaring Nazism and Communism equal; these efforts tend to thrive during periods when advantage can be taken of heightened anti-Russian sentiment in Europe. Taking his examples from Lithuania, the speaker will show how the policy plays out domestically, by trivialization and near-dismissal of the Holocaust, by prosecutors' attempts to criminalize Holocaust survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance, and by toleration of vicious new campaigns of local antisemitism. Professor Katz will also talk about today's small, vibrant and embattled Jewish community in Lithuania

Dovid Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York in a home steeped in Yiddish culture. His father was the Yiddish poet Menke Katz. He attended yeshiva and Hebrew day schools before becoming the first undergraduate major in Yiddish linguistics at Columbia University. He moved on to the University of London where he completed his doctorate on the origins of the Yiddish language. He founded Yiddish Studies at Oxford University where he led the field for eighteen years, founding and editing the Oxford Yiddish series (in Yiddish) and Winter Studies in Yiddish (in English). After a stint at Yale, he took up the new chair in Yiddish studies at Vilnius University where he cofounded the Center for Stateless Cultures and the Vilnius Yiddish Institute. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, he has been leading expeditions to seek out and record the last Yiddish speakers in Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine and other East European countries. His books include Grammar of the Yiddish Language (1987), Lithuanian Jewish Culture (2004), Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish (revised edition 2007) and Windows to a Lost Jewish Past (2008). Professor Katz has also published three collections of Yiddish fiction and writes a column for a New York Yiddish newspaper. His website is www.dovidkatz.net.

Sponsored by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and co-sponsored by the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Hillel, and the Jewish Studies Kutchin Faculty Seminar Series.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Graduate Student / Faculty Colloquium
4:30 pm , Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbuck's)
Presenter will be

Gordana Grozdanic, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
"Der Balkankrieg als literarisches Phaenomen. Norbert Gstreins "Das Handwerk des Toetens".
Friday, December 5, 2008
tba, Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, Room 329A, 3401 Walnut Street (entrance next to Starbuck's)

German Undergraduate Advisory Board (GUAB) Weihnachts Fest

Upcoming Events

Fall 2008 Events

Conferences

Lectures/Colloquia/Films