Die Zauberflöte is simultaneously one of Mozart's most accessible and most complex operas. Yet while this duality makes it a potentially valuable cultural artifact for the language classroom, students' unfamiliarity with both its operatic genre and Enlightenment context can pose a challenge to teachers. This article functions as a historical backdrop and teaching guide, offering a focused look at the opera's treatment of two of its central themes that remain relevant today: gender and race. By comparing the treatment of these social issues seen in Der Zauberflöte and with contemporary German pop songs, we can help students peer beyond the surface‐level entertainment of the opera, giving them both a richer understanding of its Enlightenment context while adding a new layer with which to understand contemporary German and U.S. culture.
An annual German Day event can be a powerful tool to motivate students, increase visibility of state and local German programs, and, ultimately, boost enrollments. However, it can also be a daunting undertaking that is often orchestrated by a single person. This article offers a user guide that can help others plan their own German Day, be it a university‐hosted statewide event or contained within a single school district and offered at a high school. Written from the dual perspective of hosts and participating teachers, this article provides instructions and insights into the basics of the event and its composite parts as well as logistical information. Sample events and schedules are included for those who wish to host their own German Day. States with existing German Days might learn from the experiences described and use new ideas to invigorate their own events.
Situated amid the stately pine forests of the Spreewald, Gerhart Hauptmann's Brandenburg novellas Bahnwärter Thiel (1888) and Fasching (1887) could hardly offer a more “German” setting. Yet rather than present an intimate depiction of a quaint corner of Germany, these naturalistically candid tales of family tragedies offer imagery that extends beyond their geographic boundaries. Given the imperial context of the novellas, as well as Hauptmann's anthropologically flavored descriptions of his characters and their milieu, they are due for a thicker reading, one that is mindful of nineteenth‐century Germany's collective ethnographic curiosity and the period's colonial discourse on exotic locales and their perceived primitive inhabitants. By foregrounding the distinctive, if not alien, characteristics of the protagonists and their families, as well as the region's geographic and cultural isolation, Hauptmann reveals the heightened ethnographic awareness that pervaded imperial Germany, and reveals a connection between colonialism and Social Darwinism that was not limited to overseas colonies.
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