Course Description

This course explores selected key moments in European art from the 15th to the 20th century, focusing on how artworks were produced, circulated, and interpreted within specific urban, political, and cultural contexts. Rather than offering a linear survey, it investigates pivotal episodes that illuminate broader issues of mobility, identity, and canon formation.

Drawing on case studies from cities such as Florence, Venice, Paris, and Berlin, students will examine how interpretive categories—including national, stylistic, and canonical labels—were historically constructed. From the commissions of Raphael and Michelangelo in 16th-century papal Rome to the emergence of genre painting in the Flemish and Dutch Golden Age, and from the peintres de la vie moderne in 19th-century Paris to the radical experiments of the German avant-garde in the 1920s, the course will investigate artworks in relation to the historical conditions and urban environments in which they were created. It will consider the dynamic interplay between artists and patrons, the tension between local traditions and individual agency, and the broader political, cultural, and social frameworks that shaped the production of images and architecture.

Students will gain understanding of the main art movements and relevant artists from the Renaissance to the postwar period as well as the basic concepts and terminology of art history. Particular attention will be given to the experience of studying artworks in person. Visits to the outstanding collections of Berlin museums and in-class exercises will train students to observe attentively, engaging with the artwork as a complex object of visual, material, and historical meaning. Learning to look closely, as a form of critical attention, is at the core of the course’s methodology.

Download Syllabus (printable PDF incl. day-to-day schedule)

Recommended Course Combinations (Selection)

• Semi-Intensive German Language Courses

• Creating a Solo Performance: Berlin Cabaret/Kabarett

Course Description

To successfully overcome the multiple challenges of our time, people must cooperate peacefully with one another. Otherwise, we as humanity will not be able to cope with climate change, ensure equal access to resources and shape a future in which peace, self-determination, freedom, and prosperity are possible.

In this course we discuss what it takes and how it is possible for people to cooperate with each other, solve problems collaboratively and resolve conflicts peacefully. The course examines the different conditions and models for cooperation. To this end, the latest results from cognitive and behavioral research, psychology, sociology, game and systems theory as well as complexity theory are presented and their relevance for creating conditions for cooperation is examined. Building on the scientific foundations, theories and methods for the peaceful resolution of differences and conflicts are then introduced. The focus here is on mediative skills and international peace mediation. However, cooperation and conflict resolution are not just knowledge, but can and must be learned and trained. In the course, students are given the opportunity to transform the knowledge they have learned into concrete skills through role plays and exercises. The experiences gained in the exercises are reflected on together. In this way, knowledge does not remain external, but is linked to concrete experiences. This creates the basis for implementing what has been learned.

The concrete practical relevance is further strengthened by two visits to Berlin NGOs that are active in international peace work. We will also invite guest speakers from the practice of international peace policy and discuss with them. Subject to availability, international guest speakers may also be invited to join the course via video conference.

Berlin has a very special significance for international peace work due to its history. Especially here, students can experience how a society dealt with its own through the Holocaust, war crimes, collapse, liberation, and new beginnings. These experiences will be embedded by visiting memorial sites in Berlin and students will thus be able to use concrete history to shape the future.

Download Syllabus (printable PDF incl. day-to-day schedule)

Recommended Course Combinations (Selection)

• Semi-Intensive German Language Courses

Course Description

The ‘Thousand Year Reich’ promised by Hitler when he became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 lasted but 12 years. During this time, Hitler and his Nazi Party came to dominate the continent, terrorized vast numbers of Germans and Europeans, launched a devastating war, dominated and laid waste to much of Europe, and orchestrated the murder of more than five million Jews. Despite the terror and vast destruction, Hitler and the Nazi Party gained and retained the active support and involvement of most Germans. How was this possible? What roles did seduction and terror, consent and coercion, play?

This class focuses on Hitler’s Germany, and it begins with the 19^th century background. Central to this session will be a discussion of the broad political currents, the agitators and petty demagogues who fueled the dissatisfaction and spread it widely. We will also examine the popular literature that Hitler and many of his supporters read and absorbed.

Crucial to understanding the lure of Hitler and the Nazi Party was Germany’s experience in the First World War, a conflict that decimated a generation and destroyed Europe as it was known. In its wake it left a shattered, humiliated, and deeply torn Germany. In this climate of uncertainty and despair, Hitler and the Nazi Party grew from a small group on the fringe of radical politics in Munich into a national force. This development is of central importance to this session. Those traits of Hitler crucial to his success, particularly his charisma, will be defined and analyzed within the broader political context of Weimar political and cultural life.

In late January 1933, Hitler gained the long desired but elusive goal: he became chancellor of Germany, the leader of a coalition government. The political intrigues leading to his appointment will be discussed. Much attention will be paid in this session to how Hitler, his cabinet, and supporters were able to consolidate the control over the state and society within a matter of months. This came at the cost of political liberties, through the growing use of terror, oppression, and intimidation. Yet, Hitler gained supporters as he seemingly offered economic stability and a new unity to the German people. How did the regime solidify its control over society and over political life? Was it seduction or terror, consent or coercion?

A key element of Hitler’s rule was the concentration camp system, what came to be a vast network of prisons, centers of oppression and death. How this developed from the hundreds of small concentration camps set up in Berlin and across Germany shortly after Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933 to the well-organized and highly centralized system by 1939 will be the focus of this session. During the war, the concentration camp system spread across Germany and occupied Europe.

Hitler’s ambitions, the conquest of ‘living space’ in Eastern Europe, the ruthless exploitation of these territories, and the annihilation of the Jews, motivated his foreign ambitions and led directly to World War II, the most destructive conflict in human history. We will also discuss the measures taken against the handicapped, homosexuals, Sinti and Roma within Germany and in the occupied territories.

In Germany and in occupied Europe opposition and resistance emerged and challenged Nazi rule. Opponents were motivated by a variety of reasons, some personal, some political. These too will be discussed as well as the regime’s ruthless efforts to eradicate all opposition.

Lastly, the class will examine the end of the war, the so-called ‘zero hour’, the destruction and collapse of Nazi Germany. Soon, the reckoning with the Nazi past through investigations and criminal prosecutions, and the widespread non-reckoning among the German public, began. Only since the late 1960s has Germany looked openly and critically at its Nazi past and only then began establishing a series of memorials and monuments, a number of which we will be visiting.

We will be visiting local museums, historical sites and locations that reveal the operations and nature of Nazi rule. These visits to sites in and near Berlin are a key element of the class and the experience of studying here. Please note that field trips are subject to change depending on the availability of appointments and speakers; on field trip days, class hours may be adjusted.

Download Syllabus (printable PDF incl. day-to-day schedule)

Recommended Course Combinations (Selection)

• Semi-Intensive German Language Courses

Course Description

Climate change, environmental pollution, waste of resources and the decline of biodiversity clearly show mankind that processes of change are necessary. On a policy level, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris climate agreement and the Green New Deal are setting the stage, at the corporate level, standards such as environmental social and governance (ESG) reporting, supply chain integrity and voluntary certification, and diversity are critical to long-term business success.

How are companies innovating towards more sustainability today? What are the criteria, the success factors and the strategic approaches to tackle consumer, policy, employee and societal demand for more sustainability?

This course will look at current sustainability frameworks, sustainable companies and sustainable innovation. The participants will get to know and to apply collaborative tools to be better prepared for a business environment. One focus will be on the development of a sustainable business model or project, based on which we will learn and try out modern methods such as the Sustainable Business Canvas, Design Thinking, Effectuation and the Blue Ocean Strategy.

Download Syllabus (printable PDF incl. day-to-day schedule) 

Recommended Course Combinations (Selection)

• Semi-Intensive German Language Courses