21st Annual German Day competition for middle and high schoolers

21st Annual German Day, April 29th at the Memorial Union.

The Department of German, with support from the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, will host 500+ students from Wisconsin middle and high school German classes for the 21st Annual German Day competition on April 29, 2010 9:00am to 2:00pm in the Memorial Union.

This year's competition motto recognizes the cooperation between Dane County and its sister county in Germany, Landkreis Kassel: "Es war einmal … Deutsch kann märchenhaft sein" — "Once upon a time … German can be like a fairytale."

Dane County's sister city, Kassel, is the home of Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm of Grimm's fairytale collection. 

German Day will also feature many events such as posters, videos, recitations, skits and more in German around themes from fairytales.

For information, contact the Department of German: (608) 262 2192 or see: http://german.lss.wisc.edu/day/Germanday.htm

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German Department honors its undergraduate, graduate students

The Department of German was proud to honor students during an April 26 banquet.

Every spring the Department of German sponsors a banquet to honor its highest achieving students.

Generous gifts from alumni and supporters around the country allow department faculty to nominate students in various categories.

On Monday evening, April 26, ten graduating seniors will be inducted into Delta Phi Alpha, the National German Honorary Society, which recognizes consistently high grades during their studies at the UW. 

Gifts from the Austrian and Swiss Consulates in Chicago as well as the Goethe Institute Chicago recognize these students' achievements:

• Caitlin Carlson
• Rachel Egger
• Alicia Groh
• Natallia Janechek
• Alan Jurgens
• Elizabeth Karn
• Ginger Kern
• Sara Koth
• Sean Seyler
• Kathleen Thomas

In addition, the department awards writing prizes to three undergraduates in its intermediate and advanced German-language courses; winners of the cash prizes this year are Jessica Kazmierczak, Eric Minkley and Carla Oppenheimer. 

To commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., provided special funding for an essay contest; the following students received prizes: Andrew Chen, Kathi Gadow, Ben Schuh, Kelsey Sorenson, Kristen Westenfield.

The department's two most prestigious undergraduate prizes are the Berghahn Essay Prize ($500), won by Anna Spafford, and the Pisk Prize ($2,500) won by Natallia Janechek. 

Four intermediate level undergraduates have been chosen for summer study fellowships ($2,500 each) at the University of Bonn: Kaitlin Johnston, Kyla Koehler, Laurel Mills and Sarah Robbins.

The department also awards two graduate prizes at the honors banquet, including the Seifert Prizes for papers in Germanic Linguistics (Elliott Gougeon, and co-authors Ryan Carroll and Charlie Webster) and the Berghahn Prize in Literature (Frieda Fichtner).

Finally, Katie Chapman, who was chosen as an L&S Teaching Fellow, will be recognized.

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March 19, 20: 'What is a German Department?' at UW

"What is a German Department?" — the 12th annual Graduate Student Conference of the German and Dutch Graduate Student Association —
will take place on March 19 and 20, 2010.

The two day conference will be hosted at the Pyle Center and will feature a variety of scholars and experts.

This year's keynote speaker is Claire Kramsch (University of California, Berkeley), "Language departments as privileged sites for the study of meaning."

For more information: "What is a German Department?"

This conference is made possible by the generous support from the Department of German, the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, the Language Institute, Center for German and European Studies, the Center for European Studies, University Lectures Committee, the UW Anonymous Fund and ASM. 

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German rap artist performs to 600+ at the union

German rap artist Doppel-U meets with students and fans at the Memorial Union during his U.S. Tour, an invitation extended by the Department of German.

German rap artist Doppel-U (a.k.a. Christian Weirich) performed at the Memorial Union Theater on March 3, 2010 to a crowd of almost 600 UW-Madison students and area high school students at the invitation of the Department of German with the support of the Goethe Institute in Chicago.

This was his first concert tour in the U.S. and Madison was his largest audience so far.

While here, Doppel-U was stopped several times by students on State Street who wanted to have their picture taken with him and get his autograph. He was impressed to learn that he has fans here in America!

Doppel-U got his start when he was commissioned to set poetry of renowned German writer Friedrich Schiller into rap lyrics for the celebration of the poet's 200th birthday in 2005.

Since then Doppel-U has traveled throughout Europe giving concerts and workshops for schools with the goal of inspiring young people to find their own ways of interpreting classical texts, by poets such as Schiller and his contemporary Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

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German offers Ornstein-Warendorf assisstantship for Dutch

Thanks to the generosity of a donor, the Department of German is pleased to recruit candidates for the new Ornstein-Warendorf Teaching Assistantship for Dutch.

This Teaching Assistantship will be used to support Dutch graduate students who come from the Netherlands to study at UW-Madison. 

The recipients will be awarded a Teaching Assistantship to teach Dutch language classes in the Department of German. Students will also teach one Dutch language course per semester and may be studying any subject and doing research on any subject.

Please contact Professor Jolanda Vanderwal Taylor for more information.

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Units team up, host successful 'The Wall Came Down' conference

Professor Konrad Jarausch (PhD'69, History) was the keynote speaker at the conference.

Continuing the "Fall of the Wall" events this year, the Department of German rolled out the 42nd Wisconsin Workshop: "The Wall Came Down."

This international conference was organized by Professors Marc Silberman and Venkat Mani and was held at the Pyle Center from Nov. 5-7.

Interdisciplinary scholars and graduate students from the fields of German studies, history, anthropology, communication studies and geography assessed retrospectively how Germany came to terms with national and political division as well as the dynamics of contemporary scenarios of peoples divided against themselves.

Keynote speaker Professor Konrad Jarausch (University of North Carolina), a UW Madison history alumnus (PhD'69) who discussed the nature of the 1989 event. 

The successful conference attracted overflow audiences interested in the cultural and social dimensions of borders, boundaries, and exclusions as well as bridges and crossings. 

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Department of German commemorates the fall of the Berlin Wall

The UW German Club commemorated the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on campus.

As the 20th Century's leading symbol of difference and division, the Berlin Wall had an enormous cultural and historical impact on the two former Germanies and serves as a lingering specter haunting the new walls, barriers, and fences dividing populations in the 21st Century.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989), the UW-Madison Department of German launched a number of programs to commemorate the event.

The UW German Club, under the faculty supervision of Professor Charles James, competed for a grant from the German Embassy in Washington, DC to organize a simulation of the Berlin Wall and its demise. 

On October 23, the club constructed a "Berlin Wall" from 2x4s and large cardboard sheets. Students were invited to decorate the wall with relevant graffiti before the "wall came down" at sunset. 

For more information about the event, see http://germanclub.rso.wisc.edu/berlinwall.html

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