German 110 with Professor Roland
was a treat. It is a great change of
pace from the normal “lecture only” style of classes. It has a very different layout from other
classes at St. Cloud State. The class is
more student orientated in the way that being involved in the discussions is
almost mandated by the way we present information from student to student. All in all it was a great class and the
following is an overview of what I learned this semester in German 110.
The class began with a question and
answer session between Professor Roland and all of the students. He also asked us what we knew about German
culture, politics, and any miscellaneous information or assumptions we had
about Germany. We than learned about the
16 German states, which are Baden-Wurttemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg,
Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, North
Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig, and
Thuringia. We leaned about each states
geography, main businesses, political powers, and their population. Each student made a short slide show of one
of each state to show the class. We than
learned about each of Germany’s Political Parties, which are The CDU, The CSU,
The SPD, The FDP, The Greens, and The Pirates.
The Pirates were a very interesting political entity to hear about. The party seems so loose in their goals other
than keeping the Internet ungoverned.
After we learned about these Political Parties we read the book, “All
Quiet on the Western Front.” This was a
great book showcasing the hardships that fell upon young soldiers who were
called to war and how one whole generation was lost in Germany due to The Great
War. After reading the book and
discussing the book in great detail we watched a movie based upon the book, but
in my opinion it did not have near the power as the book did in showing the
hardships of these soldiers. We than all
did a review of a character in the book and how we envisioned the
character. We also did some group work
where we reviewed a single chapter from the book and interpreted it in great
detail. We than got into some stuff that
I am very interested in; German Arts, German Fine Culture, German Poetry, and
German Literature. Groups covered 18th,
19th and 20th Arts and businesses in great detail and
exhibited pieces or works from German Artists in these respective time
periods. We also learned about sports
and medicine from those time periods and about the role of women in those time
periods. After learning about those
topics in each time period we watched to movies. The first movie was Berlin Calling and the
second movie was Der Baader Meinhof Komplex.
The movie Berlin Calling was a movie about a young man who is part of a
culture in Germany that abuses drugs and is not happy with the norms of society
like working 9-5 and being married to one other person and staying with
them. The next movie that we watched was
about the RAF, a group in Germany in protested oppression against West Germany. This movie was very raw; it depicted this
group as killers and willing to do anything to get their cause heard and in the
media. Both of these movies worked well
with each other because of the way that they depicted youth in Germany. We than had a debate about guns, diplomacy,
and where we stood on the grounds of using force to further a point.
Like I said earlier I really
enjoyed the class as an introduction to German culture and how relatable it is
to our own culture here in the United States.
