Contact: Suzanne Trimel For immediate release

(212) 854-6579 April 2, 1999

smt4@columbia.edu

 

 

Kurt Masur is Columbiaâs Guest April 12

As Deutsches Haus Reopens Renovated Library

 

Columbia Universityâs Deutsches Haus ÷ the oldest foreign language house at an American university ÷ will host maestro Kurt Masur on Monday, April 12, for a talk on German music in celebration of the reopening of its newly renovated library.

Masur, the distinguished international conductor and music director of the New York Philharmonic, will discuss the relationship between German music and literature at a reception beginning at 6:30 P.M. at Deutsches Haus, located at 420 West 116th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive on Morningside Heights. Masur, who was born in Silesia, educated in Germany and held his first major orchestral appointment as conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic, will give the talk in English and will also make brief remarks in German. He will take questions afterwards.

The reception will formally open the renamed Max Kade Library at Deutsches Haus and will include additional remarks by Columbia University President George Rupp, Vice President for Arts and Sciences David Cohen, and Professor Andreas Huyssen, the Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia.

Through the generosity of the Max Kade Foundation, the mezzanine library at Deutsches Haus underwent a $100,000 renovation, its first in 25 years, said Bettina Brandt, Deutsches Haus director. In addition to new wiring and other physical improvements, the 6,000-volume library has been updated to include a new periodicals reading room with major German newspapers and magazines and computer room with multi-media resources and a satellite connection to German television news. The University Libraries system at Columbia maintains extensive holdings in German books and journals.

Deutsches Haus, founded in 1911, has initiated a $1 million fundraising campaign to modernize its facility and enhance its programming. In addition to serving the 150 German students studying at Columbia this year, the 500 undergraduate students enrolled in German language courses and graduate students in the Department of Germanic Languages, Deutches Haus is an important resource for the German community in New York.

Throughout its history, Deutsches Haus has introduced many of Germanyâs most important thinkers to an American audience ÷ Max Planck, Edmund Husserl and Thomas Mann among them. It remains an important cultural resource for the discovery of developments in German film, literature, political commentary, popular culture and for international scholarly exchange through its two scholarly journals, The Germanic Review, and New German Critique. These journals provide scholarly outlets for worldwide distribution of Deutsches Hausâ conferences and symposia. New German Critique has dedicated special issues to conferences on xenophobia in Europe in 1992 and the legacy of anti-fascism in Europe in 1995. The Germanic Review this fall will publish the proceedings of a conference on Heinrich Heine.

In recent years, in addition to maintaining its focus on Germany and the United States, Deutsches Haus has evolved into a more international forum for interdisciplinary exchange, said Dr. Brandt. The language house has cultural and language programming in Dutch, Swedish, Finnish and Yiddish. During the spring semester, Deutsches Haus has held lectures on the Americanization of Europe, on German-Jewish modernism, and on such diverse topics as the configuration of nature in cyberspace.

Deutches Haus has benefited from its close link to Columbiaâs top-ranked Department of Germanic Languages. Its noted faculty members include Mark Anderson, author of Hitlerâs Exiles: The Flight from Nazi Germany to America (1998); Andreas Huyssen, author of Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (1995) and After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism; Dorothea von Mucke, author of several works on 18th and 19th Century literature and culture; Harro Muller, who has written extensively about literary theory; and Willi Goetschel, an expert on the Enlightenment and German-Jewish writers.

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