YESTERDAY

Deutsches Haus at Columbia University was the first foreign language house to be established at an American university. Since its founding in 1911, Deutsches Haus has forged a vital link between German culture and the rich artistic life of New York City. For over eighty years, we have introduced German authors, critics, politicians, philosophers, directors and entrepreneurs to an American audience concerned with German affairs. In the first part of this century, Deutsches Haus was dedicated to preserving Germany's unique cultural and literary tradition.

The fate of Deutsches Haus has been closely tied to political events. As a consequence of World War I, Deutsches Haus was closed not to be reopened until 1929, when the New York Times as well as other American and German newspapers featured front-page articles on the new cultural center. Numerous scholars and businessmen attended and supported the re-opening. For them the Haus embodied the "good will" in the restoration of German-American relations.

A partial list of intellectuals who have spoken at Deutsches Haus reads like a history of the twentieth century: Edmund Husserl, Max Planck, Max Brod, Gerhart Hauptmann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Arnold Zweig, Stefan Qweig and Thomas Mann; Günter Grass, Max Frisch, Uwe Johnson, Wolfgang Koeppen, Barbara Frischmuth and Niklas Luhmann.

Operation of Deutsches Haus ceased again during World War II. During the 1950s and 1960s many German-Jewish émigrés participated in Deutsches Haus programs both as speakers and active audience, thus significantly shaping and preserving Bildung in the United States.

TODAY

Now at the end of the millennium, the audience attending Deutsches Haus has become more diverse. As the American interest in German culture has evolved, so too has the curriculum of the Germanic Languages Department and with it the program of Deutsches Haus. Initially dedicated to preserving Germany's unique literary tradition, Deutsches Haus today seeks to integrate various facets of German, Austrian, Swiss, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish and Yiddish culture into an extended international dialogue.

To finance its Fall and Spring program, Deutsches Haus has regularly received small contributions from Columbia University as well as outside sources. The list of organizations that have contributed to Deutsches Haus in recent years is long: it includes the Goethe Institut New York, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Washington, the German Academic Exchange Service, the German Consulate, the German Information Center, the Max Kade Foundation, the Baier Foundation, the Austrian Institute, the Swiss Institute, Cornell University Medical College in New York City, and Institutes at Columbia such as the Center for Jewish and Isreali Studies, the Institutes on Western and Eastern Europe, the Casa Italiana, the Maison Française, Miller Theater, the School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

Today's New Yorkers look to Deutsches Haus as a resource to discover new developments in German film, literature, political commentary, popular culture and criticism. A strong presence on campus with its annual conferences, lectures, films, symposia and readings, the Haus is a lively center of international scholarly exchange. With two in-house journals of German Studies, The Germanic Review and New German Critique, Deutsches Haus' scholarly outlets for its conference proceedings disseminate our symposia to readers worldwide. New German Critique has dedicated special issues to several Deutsches Haus conferences in recent years: Siegfried Kracauer (1990); Xenophobia in Europe (1992); The Legacy of Anti-Facism in Germany, France, Italy and England (1995); and Richard Wagner (1996).

The Department of Germanic Languages and Literature at Columbia provides students with systematic training in German literature with a focus on the modern period and on contemporary cultural theory. The curriculum provides comprehensive coverage of the major periods, genres, and authors of German literature from 1750 to the present, as well as theoretical perspectives such as critical theory, psychoanalyses, feminism, discourse analysis, and hermeneutics. Students are also encouraged to develop an interdisciplinary program of study with faculty in Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Film, and Women's Studies. Distinguished Max Kade Scholars, such as Reinhart Koselleck, Gertrud Koch, Klaus Scherpe, Slavoj Zizek, Elizabeth Bronfen, and Friedrich A. Kittler have regularly supplemented the Department's offerings and serve as sponsors to graduate students doing dissertation research at German universities.

Our goal is to increase the activities of Deutsches Haus and to secure its prominent position in New York's cultural life for the future. Currently our events cover a wide range of topics from general issues of broad public interest to specialized work in academic disciplines:

• Language Acquisition
• Contemporary Politics and Economics
• Media and Popular Culture
• Scholarly Lectures
• Performances and Exhibitions
• Conferences