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Fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn

Today we left Ludwigshafen and we chased the sunny holes in the clouds down to Freiburg, a picturesque town in the Black Forest (Schwarzwald). We saw the spacious cathedral in Freiburg and shopped at the farmer's market. Most people ate some delicious Wurst from street vendors, and the chaperones tried donkey salami (no joke). Then we saw a cuckoo clock demonstration, ate a good meal and enjoyed a traditional Black Forest cake (Schwartzwälder Kirschtorte) for Emily's birthday (Herzlichen Glückwünsch zum Geburtstag, Emily!). We read the original text of Hänsel und Gretel by the Brother's Grimm in a small chapel with a creepy pile of human bones in the basement (a graveyard had been dug up years ago and the bones moved to the chapel). We hit a bonus country -- Switzerland! We ventured just over the border to view the Rhein Falls and play on a rather unique playground (other blog post to follow). Then we traveled to the city of Konstanz on Lake Constance (Bodensee) for a bit more shopping and exploration. The streets and architecture were beautiful; there was so much to look at. Finally, we checked into our hotel in Singen, and it is modern and comfortable. We are pretty much past our jetlag and the students are adapting very well. The German people have been very nice and everyone is having a great time. I'm still working on uploading photos -- our tour guide Kris has posted some at the Explorica site, but we'll get some up here eventually! All the best, Ms. Nak

Freiburger Münster (cathedral)

Outside the cathedral



Inside the cathedral in Freiburg

Wurst (including donkey!) at the market in Freiburg

Cuckoo clock shop

Emily eating Black Forest Cake in the Black Forest for her birthday

Small chapel near cuckoo clock shop

Heidelberg

On our first day in Germany, we met up with our tour guide Kris, who took us to Heidelberg. It is a beautiful little city with the oldest university in Germany, founded in the 1300s. We visited the Heidelberg castle, where we saw the world's largest wine barrel (it had a dance floor on top). We had some free time to walk into town and shop, and students had the opportunity to procure their own lunches. Nobody went hungry, which means they all did great fending for themselves! After a bit of exploring, jetlag really set in. We walked across the Nekar river and sat on the bank, soaking in some much welcomed sunshine to help reset our internal clocks. Then we headed to our hotel for the night where we ate dinner and are about to crash! -Ms. Nak

Heidelberg castle

Heidelberg castle - the newer part

View of Heidelberg from the castle

The kids prop themselves up against the fountain in the Heidelberg Marktplatz as jetlag sets in

Zombie Knight School, Germany edition :)

Nekar River in Heidelberg

Wir sind hier!

Hallo! We had a smooth flight and landed safely in Frankfurt. We met our wonderful tour guide Kris, who showed us around Heidelberg. We just checked into our first hotel and are cleaning up to go to dinner. Everyone is extraordinarily jetlagged, but we are trying to power through! We'll sleep well tonight, that's for sure. We will post pictures and more information as soon as we can, but rest assured -- despite feeling tired, everyone is doing very well and we are so happy to be here!
-Ms. Nak

Development of the German Language in North America

Development of the German Language in North America

In the 1600s, a large-scale immigration of the Germans to North America took place. The main causes of this migration were related to overpopulation and development. Regardless of why the Germans immigrated, they have left a lasting influence on America. Common items including the Christmas tree, the hamburger, the pretzel, and the gymnasium have all been inspired and brought over by the Germans.

Interestingly, both the German and the English languages developed from the same language, West Germanic. Because they share these roots, there are a few words that are exactly the same in both languages, such as “finger”, “hand”, “wind”, and “winter”. Because of the cultural influence brought over by the German immigrants, some words were adopted into the English language.

English: German:

Angst Angst (“anxiety”)

Cookbook Kockbuch (“cookbook”)

Hold on Halt an (“wait a minute”)

Iceberg Eisberg (“iceberg”)

Waltz Walzer (“roll or dance”)

During the 1600s, the use of the German language steadily grew in the States. When the German immigration reached its peak (in the 1800s), the use of the German language reached its highest point. However, German immigrants also worked to learn the English language to improve communication with other Americans. Throughout the duration of World War I, Germany was considered an enemy to the states; consequently, people were frowned upon for speaking German. During this time, the German immigrants worked very hard to learn the English language and to assimilate into North American culture. In some areas, using the German language was outlawed. To avoid prejudice, German families switched their names to English names. “Schmidt” or “Schmied” became “Smith”, “Braun” became “Brown”, and “Schwarz” became “Black”.

Today, there are a select few places in the States where German is spoken, including parts of Texas, Pennsylvania, Iowa, as well as North and South Dakota.

Citations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language

http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~hr/lang/dt-hist.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_in_the_United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American

"We Came to North America: The Germans" by Greg Nickles

The Treaty of Versailles

A post from Alex:

The Treaty of Versailles was a document created by the United Kingdom, France and Russia in 1918, to end World War I. After the war, the Allied Powers created this treaty, which held Germany responsible for the whole war. Though the other countries contributed to the millions and millions of deaths, Germany was still blamed for all the terrible events. This treaty forced Germany to take responsibility for the war and pay back the UK, France, Russia and other European countries for all the damage they caused. The treaty forced them to give up the city of Alsace Lorraine to France, along with the center city of their economy, Saar Basin. Even after the Allied Powers took away Germany’s source of money, they still expected the German government to pay for the deaths of their citizens. To summarize, the Treaty of Versailles was used to scapegoat Germany for World War I. This treaty suppressed Germany and is thought to have contributed to the beginning World War II.

Longest German Word

A post from Alex:

The longest word in the German language is: Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft, meaning “association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services.” This word is 79 letters long. The reason that such an obscure word exists is because in this language, you can combine German descriptions to make one mega-word.

German Fairy Tales (hansel and Gretel)

We all know Snow White and Sleeping Beauty from the early child hood Disney movies, but these actually originate from the Brother’s Grimm stories. The Grimm Brothers wrote many of the famous stories that Americans know today, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, and many others. Hansel and Gretel was used to warn children against being easily tricked into a stranger’s house, much like today how parents warn their kids not to take rides from strangers. The point being that kids are naïve. The Germans took it to quite an extreme with this story. It starts out with children being purposely abandoned by their parents in the middle of the woods with nothing to eat but bread. To a young child this would be shocking since children rely on their parents for everything. Keep in mind that this story was directed towards young children in Germany. The clever children left stones to mark the way that they got into the forest and therefore were able to avoid their parents’ plot of leaving them in the forest to die. However, the parents again tried to abandon them in the forest so this time the children left a breadcrumb path. The forest creatures ate this and so they could not find their way back home and had no food. Eventually after days of wondering the children found a house made out of candy. To an audience of children this would be especially enticing because when these stories were written sugar was quite rare because there was no corn syrup in candy to sweeten it. SO children could sympathize with Hansel and Gretchen in why they would want to eat the house, because no doubt they would want to as well. Then the gruesome part of the story comes, which German fairy tales are notorious for. The witch of the candy house reveals that she wants to eat the children, something that would never be in a children’s movie in America now (picture Barney trying to eat some of the kids). Gretel however is too smart for the witch and pushed her into the oven in which she intended to cook Hansel. There she is burned alive. This is something that still deeply frightens me; so imagine a 4-year-old learning how great it is to burn alive people who are evil. Then the children find lots of treasure, steal it, and bring it back to their parents who abandon them. To make the story even better the mother is dead, which leads to children and the father to rejoice. They rejoice at their mother’s death! Since America tends to be Christian, this would have been shocking to be happy when a mother is dead. Even though Germany was Christian, for some reason hundreds of years ago extreme methods for reprimanding those that did evil deeds was encouraged through propaganda in children’s stories. It is so interesting that even today when blissful movies like Pooh Bear’s Great Adventure are around (the worst thing that happens in that is Pooh gets lost in a cave for a couple minutes), the story of Hansel and Gretel is still well known. No one dies in children stories any more, let alone is burned to death. Nobody would dare try to eat a child, even attempt to eat one.

Fußball in Germany

Fussball (soccer) is easily the most popular and respected sport in Germany. It is become so popular, it is know a part of German culture. Soccer is to Germany what Baseball is to the United States. They take pride in their soccer prowess, especially during the World Cup. Germany has won the World cup three times. It won in 1954, 1974, and 1990.

The most famous German soccer player is Franz Beckenbauer. Franz was captain of the German national for many years and played in over 100 international games. Franz was undisputed the best defender of his time. He also played for the most popular club in Germany, Bayern Munich.

Germany has managed to stay in small group of elite national teams over the years. With their skilled captain, Michael Ballack, and their abundance of young talent, they are in position to stay at the top for a very long time.

The main reason that soccer is the most popular sport in Germany is because it is everywhere. It is played in the streets and the parks for hours on end by athletes of all ages. It is the only sport televised on a regular basis. The Germans have their own club league that is very prosperous and popular in all of europe, not just Germany.










Citation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Beckenbauer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_national_football_team

Dolchstoβlegende

Dolchstoβlegende was the "stab in the back myth" that helped the Nazis rise to power. It started with the head of the British Military Mission in Berlin who merely suggested the idea that Germany was stabbed in the back when it was lacking in civilian support. Field Marshal Erich von Ludendorff, the force behind Hindenburg, was excited about this idea and Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, a war hero for the Germans in WWI, told the National Assembly that the German army was "stabbed in the back". The Germans knew this story very well, because it was exactly like what happens to the hero in the epic poem Nibelugenlied where Siegfried is stabbed in the back by Hagen von Tronje.

The Nazis used this to their advantage by claiming that all Germans were "stabbed in the back" by the Jewish people, socialists, and the liberals who forced them to surrender. This myth helped the Nazi party grow because it caused German WWI veterans to compare the poem and the recent happenings in the war. Dolchstoβlegende helped the Nazis slaughter millions of people in the holocaust, claiming that they "stabbed German in the back" during WWI. People were so patriotic, they believed that these Jews were not loyal to their country, and let the holocaust happen.

Citations:

http://history1900s.about.com/od/holocaustglossary/g/dolchstoss.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_legend

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/06/0081080

1972 Summer Olympics

The Munich Massacre in the 1972 Summer Olympics

On September 4th, 8 members of the group Black September took 9 hostages and killed members of the Israeli Olympic team during 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. The group Black September was a terrorist organization that related to Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization, and their original plan to take the hostages was named "Ikrit and Biram". The organization named the operation Ikrit and Biram after two Christian Palestinian villages whose inhabitants were exiled or killed in 1948 by the Hagannah, a Jewish paramilitary organization. 

The 8 members of the Black September group took 9 hostages after breaking into the apartment of the Israeli team. The Olympic village had been created to have little security and few checkpoints to emphasize a relaxed atmosphere after the oppressive memories of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which had been taken advantage of by Adolf Hitler as an opportunity to impose propaganda. This lack of security made it easier for the terrorists to break into the building, where they killed two men, Yossef Gutfreund (a wrestling referee), and Moshe Weinberg (wrestling coach). As the hostages were taken from the building, Weinberg killed one and knocked another unconscious before being shot to death. The nine remaining hostages were guarded in two team member's rooms. 

The reason for the terrorist attack was because the members of Black September wanted the release and safe return to Egypt of non-Arabs and 234 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. The response from Israel was that there would be no negotiation. However, there is controversy over whether the German police refused an offer from Israel to send special forces to aid the Germans, or if this offer even existed. One way people believe the attack could have been prevented is if there had been better knowledge of how to handle a hostage crisis from the German police. Another problem the German police faced was that at the airport, when the terrorists were transporting the hostages to an airplane that would take them to Cairo, was that the German snipers stationed around the airport to assault them had no special training.  A miscommunication among the German police created more problems, as at the last minute when the hostages boarded the plane, they realized there were 8 terrorists instead of the presumed 3, and the German police called off the assault without informing the snipers of their change. This lack of control and communication resulted in all of the hostages being killed, while all but 2 terrorists were killed as well. In total, 11 Israelis were killed, as well as 1 German policeman. A large part of the blame for their deaths was placed on the lack of preparation for such events by the Germans. 

Citations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_massacre

http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_munich.php

http://middleeast.about.com/od/terrorism/a/me080803e.htm

Causes of World War II

Many historians believe that the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, helped create the perfect environment to generate World War II twenty years later. Under the treaty, full blame for World War I was placed on Germany, which itself had lost about two million soldiers in the war. In addition, Germany lost its colonies and about fifteen percent of its European territory, was required to greatly reduce its military (including a requirement to delete its air force), and Germany was required to pay heavy reparations to the winning countries. Germany was also forbidden to annex new territories. After World War I, Germany’s economy was in shambles, and the country ultimately couldn’t fulfill its obligations to pay reparations.

Many Germans had held the mistaken belief that the end of World War I was based on President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which served as the foundation of the peace talks that resulted in the Treaty of Versailles. The Fourteen Points were much more lenient than the Treaty of Versailles. This mistaken assumption caused resentment and distrust in Germany of its post World War I government, the Weimar Republic. The post war environment created conditions for extreme nationalism in Germany. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, which took control of Germany in 1933, demanded that the German people take vengeance on the rest of the world. Hitler built up the German military, and convinced the German people that conflict was the only way to re-establish Germany as a political power in the world. In 1936, Hitler blatantly ignored the Treaty of Versailles by taking over the Rhineland, which had been a demilitarized zone since World War I. European nations objected, but took no action.

In 1937, Neville Chamberlain became the Prime Minister of Great Britain. He believed that Germany had been treated badly under the Treaty of Versailles, and thought that Hitler should be allowed to proceed with rearming Germany. This was known as a policy of appeasement, and only strengthened Nazi control in Germany, and hastened the war.

The League of Nations, which was established in 1919 to keep world peace, was a failure. The United States never joined the League, and it really never had much power. It’s failure as a peacekeeping body is thought to have contributed to the war as well.

While it can never be said with certainty that World War II could have been prevented, some believe that if the Treaty of Versailles had not been so harsh against Germany that World War II could have been avoided. Also, some believe that if the United States and others had intervened early to stop the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, that World War II would not have happened.

World War Two Causes, http://www.historyonthenet.com/WW2/causes.htm

Alan Brinkley, American History, A Survey, Volume II. New York. McGraw-Hill 2007.

Kennedy Hickman, World War II in Europe: The Road to War.

http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/wwiieurcauses.htm

Robert W. Strayer, Ways of the World, A Brief Global History. New York. Bedford/St. Martins 2009.

John S. Tulp, Essentials of American History. Sanwich, MA. Wayside Publishing 2002.

Struwwelpeter: A classic German cautionary tale

Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffman is a famous German children’s book. It is a classic example of cautionary children’s tales with a clear, most of which share a rather gruesome moral. Such stories include:

The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb: A boy sucks his thumb, so a tailor comes and cuts off his thumbs with giant scissors.

The Story of Augustus who would not have any Soup: A healthy boy does not eat his soup and dies in five days.

The Story of Pauline and the Matches: A little girl plays with matches and burns to death.

Some stories end in death or serious harm to the children, while others are slightly more trivial, such as being dipped in ink. What makes German cautionary tales unique is that such terrible consequences happen to children. For instance, Greek myths almost always involve adults. Prometheus in greek mythology was chained to a rock where a eagle ate his liver out of him every day because he stole fire from the gods, which is indeed gruesome, but not the punishment of a child. Aesop’s fables, which are similar, are also focused at children and have a clear moral. However, they don’t use children as the protagonists, substituting animals instead.

http://www.fln.vcu.edu/struwwel/struwwel.html

http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/grecoromanmyth1/a/prometheus.htm

http://www.holyebooks.org/authors/aesops/fables_rev/aesop_fables_rev.html

Famous German Composers

Who are the most famous German composers besides Mozart and Beethoven?

Here are composers of the German speaking region, because there was no "German" state at that time:

Johann Sebastian Bach

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Johannes Brahms

Anton Bruckner

Carl Czerny

Georg Friedrich Händel

Joseph Haydn

Gustav Mahler

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Franz Schubert

Robert Schumann

Richard Strauss

Richard Wagner

Georg Philipp Telemann

Carl Maria von Weber

Do you know any of them and/or their compositions?

Please share!