JFK, Willy Brandt & Konrad Adenauer
at the Brandenburg Gate, June 26, 1963

Course materials:
syllabus, reader TOC,
lecture outlines,
book essay handout,
web option handout

Links (suggestions welcome):
useful sites & interesting links ;
other post-45 Germany courses;
resources for paper topics ;
index page of student essays

Announcements (old announcements move to bottom, where there are also visitor statistics)

• Dec. 12, 2005: this page superceded by my new Winter 2006 course homepage.
• Nov. 18, 2005: Course books for Winter 2006 will be [prices are $new/used]:
  • Mary Fulbrook, Divided Nation: Germany 1918-1990 (Oxford, 1992) [$34/2 at amazon]
    (12/11/05: The 2002 Blackwell edition, History of Germany 1918-2000: The Divided Nation [$35/24] is acceptable as well--it is the same except for 3 1/2 pages of new epilog.)
    The 1992 edition is available for on-line checkout at the UCSB library.
  • Ika Hugel-Marshall, Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany (Continuum, 2002) [$10/3 at amazon] HQ1625.H84 A3 2001
  • Christopher Hilton, The Wall: The People's Story (Sutton, 2003) [$13/7 at amazon] DD881 .H57 2001
  • Jana Hensel, After The Wall: Confessions from an East German Childhood and the Life that Came Next, (Public Affairs, 2004) [$16/5 from amazon]
• Oct. 26, 2005: This class will be offered MWF 11-12 this coming Winter quarter. Interested students are encouraged to attend the Nov. 14 talk by Ika Hügel-Marshall: "Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany," followed by a discussion. 1001 Life Sciences Building.
  Ika Hügel-Marshall's translator, Dagmar Schultz, is also the co-producer of a 28-minute film, "Hope in my heart: The May Ayim Story", which is a documentary on the life and untimely death of Afro-German poet May Ayim. The film will be screened following Ika Hügel-Marshall's lecture. Dagmar Schultz will introduce the film and be available for the discussion afterwards.
• October 10, 2005: In the process of selecting the course books for my Winter 2006 offering of this course, I've reviewed some more on-line syllabi to see what texts others use:
  • Brent Maner, History 588 The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany, Kansas State, Fall 2004
    <http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~maner/nazi_syll.htm>: good readings but Nazi-era
  • David Tompkins, History of Germany since 1914, Rutgers University
    <http://pages.wooster.edu/~dtompkins/RutgersSyllabusWeb.html>: uses Fulbrook, Christa Wolf, What Remains (Chicago, 1995)
  • AICGS database, 1995 Kansas course, reads Grass, Gilman, Helga Koenigsdorf, Adieu DDR
    <http://www.aicgs.org/resources/daad/1994029.shtml>
  • See also my "Other Courses" page, with annotated links to other post-45 Germany courses.
• July 27, 2005: Deutsche Welle's Dummy's Guide to German Elections is quite good.
• July 19, 2005: Nicely illustrated blog entry by Norman Birnbaum summarizing the summer 2005 political situation in Germany. Gives concise background information.
• March 30, 2005: I've finally added Ursula Ginder's paper on Nazi Art exhibitions to the projects page.
• Nov. 11, 2004: Was Ronald Reagan the "real" cause of the fall of the Berlin Wall? In an op-ed piece in the LA Times "It was Reagan who tore down that wall," conservative historian Dinesh D'Souza argues he was. My and other letters to the editor argue he wasn't.
  So: What evidence does D'Souza present to make his case? What did cause the fall of the wall?
• Sept. 29, 2004: I found an interesting teaching site developed since 1999 by a German teacher teaching at an elite school in Korea, "WHKMLA," hosted by the Center for Instructional Media in Germany. It is in English, and especially the links seem to be unique (they go beyond the usual).
• Apr. 2, 2004: The German film Goodbye Lenin just opened in Santa Barbara. It is a wonderful comedy that turns the fall of the Berlin wall on its head (the Westerners flood eastward!). A must-see for students in this course--you'll recognize much of the documentary footage we saw. Here are some links: Internet Movie Data Base plot summary; trailer (on apple website); German homepage
• Mar. 24: I've updated the web projects index page, and finished formating the essays. If you notice mistakes or have suggestions, please let me know.
• Mar. 24: my office hours for spring will be: Wed. 1-2 and Thu. 11-12.
• Mar. 23, 2004, 8pm: One student has already found out his grade from GOLD. Here is the distribution of grades according to the raw point score (95 possible points [well 101, if you count the double extra credit for the Robert Krell events]):
  

  # students	86-85pts=B+     2	75-71pts=C+   4	D    0
  94-90pts=A    5	84-80pts=B      10	70-62pts=C     2	D-  0	graduate student: 1
  89-87pts=A-   5	79-76pts=B-      4	pts=C-   0	F    0	total:   33

  Please note my grading policies, below, and that you are welcome to come to my office and pick up your work.
  Thank you all for your participation--I enjoyed the course in spite of my very hectic quarter, and I am looking forward to working with some of you in my 133p proseminar (20022004 website) during a somewhat more relaxed quarter (for me) this spring.
• Added Dec. 5, 2004: Interested in grade inflation since the 1970s, all across the USA?
  Check out this website: www.gradeinflation.com. On the second-to-last graph, the one with the scattered points, you'll find UCSB below the blue line at the 10-year time span. The researcher got data from UCSB's Office of Budget and Planning showing that our campus GPA went from 2.84 in 1994 to 2.93 in 1999.

Bernhard Schlink:
The Reader
amazon $4.50 used, $10 new
(course handout)

• Textbook: Mary Fulbrook, The Divided Nation: A History of Germany, 1918-1990 (1992). Excellent textbook starting in 1918 but focusing on the post-1945 period. DD240.F85 1992 [full text on-line through UCSB library]
• Heinrich Böll, Billiards at Half-past Nine (1959). Set in 1958, this novel examines how three generations of a German family confronted the Nazi period and its aftermath. PT2603.O394 B513 1994. [Böll handout]
• Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper (1983). This novel evokes the situation in divided Berlin in the early 1980s, and attempts to show some of the positive sides of life in East Germany. PT2680.N37 M313 1983.
• Bernhard Schlink, The Reader [person who reads aloud] (1995). A best-selling novel showing how a German born in 1943 unknowingly replicates a legacy of the Nazi past. PT2680.L54 V6713 1997 [Schlink handout]

Course Description and Goals (back to top)

Germany was one of the United States’ main enemies in two world wars prior to 1945, but by the early 1950s it was well on the way to becoming our most reliable ally in Europe, a "bastion of democracy" buffering capitalist western from communist eastern Europe. How was this turnaround possible? This course pays special attention to the process of development of German political culture after 1945.

I realize that a short time after a course most students will remember only a few points about material from that course. Thus I try to emphasize themes and skills that will hopefully have more lasting value. Throughout this course, we will practice analyzing and interpreting evidence to draw our own conclusions about the causes and effects of historical developments.

Some useful sites and interesting links (back to top)

• German News--daily translations of news shorts from Germany that you can have e-mailed to yourself
  (The Germany Embassy in Washington's This Week in Germany is similar, but weekly.)
• German-English dictionaries: LEO and TU-Chemnitz; babelfish gives rough translations
• The German Historical Museum (DHM) in Berlin has lots of mages and documents in its collection.
• East German propaganda documents, at an excellent site created in 1999 by Randall Bytwerk at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
• Germany-Info.org, maintained by the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., has fact sheets, a timeline, a historical overview (3 parts about 1945-present on right), and some historical features, such as on unification.
  Not to miss: the newsletter archive, cultural archive, archives of speeches since 1996-- it's endless!
• The US Embassy in Germany has a "History of German-American Relations" site with great documents from 1683 to the present, easily navigable with great e-texts (some are in my Hist 133c course reader) and links.
• Nicely illustrated short lecture series by Adolph Hoffman, a German instructor at Santa Rosa Jr. College, on "Berlin and the Two Germanies, 1945-1989."
• The US State Department has documents from the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) about Germany and Berlin online (1964-1968 link).

Materials from Prof. Marcuse's 1998 and 2000 Hist 133c courses (back to top)

• Fall 1998: homepage; syllabus; exam study guide
• Winter 2000: homepage; syllabus; exam study guide

Grading policies (back to top)

Grading can serve many purposes. Among them are: motivating students to engage with the material (by providing feedback and rewarding effort), assessing how well students have done the assigned work, and ranking students relative to each other.
I personally dislike assigning grades. I'm interested in what you have to say, and want you to put in the effort to develop interesting thoughts and express them well. I hope you will be motivated to learn enough factual material to have a solid basis from which you can develop your thoughts. If you need the prospect of a better grade to do the learning and thinking, fine. For various reasons, I have to grade to assess your work anyway (if I write letters of recommendation, for instance, I need some data on relative strengths and weaknesses, and effort expended). The grade distributions I give my courses are also monitored by the department and the University. (see grade distributions for some of my other lecture courses: 33d-02, 33d-03)
My bottom line: I want the grades I give to be a FAIR reflection of the effort (attendance, doing assignments, meeting deadlines) and learning (content of submitted work) you show, and to give a rough indication of where you stand on those factors relative to others in the class.

If you are think your grade does not reflect your work and effort:

• First, please note that I grade YOUR WORK, not you.
• If you feel that the grade you received on your paper or exam does not correspond to the quality of work that you submitted, or the effort you put into it, you have two options:
  1. Print out, complete, and submit the following Grade Change Application Form ;-),
     OR:
  2. Write a page (or paragraph, whatever it takes) explaining WHY you think your work is better than the grade assigned to it. Please refer to the appropriate assignment sheet (for book essays and web projects), and make sure you did the assignment.
     • Then resubmit the work in question with your explanation, and I will regrade it and get back to you.
     • Be sure to put some contact address on your explanation sheet, so that I can be in touch with you.
     • Note that I reserve the right to lower your grade, if I feel that is warranted by closer examination

Picking up your work

I keep all student work for at least one quarter after the course is over. If you would like to pick up your work, please come to my office. During my office hours is usually best for me, but if you would like your work left in an envelope in the envelope outside my door, or to arrange a different pick-up time, send me an e-mail or leave a note.

Old Announcements (back to top)

• Dec. 15, 2003: web site still under construction.
• Dec. 15, 2003: This course is currently full (40 students). If you want to be on a waiting list, e-mail me (marcuse@history.ucsb.edu). [Dec. 23, 03: 4 students waitlisted]
• Dec. 26, 2003: draft syllabus (link) and reader TOC (link) added
• Jan. 4, 2004: Note that the class meets in Building 327, rm 104 (across the parking lot from the MultiCultural Center end of the UCen, near the Psych building), MWF at 9am.
• Jan. 5, 2004: The readings for Jan. 7 are also available on-line: poem "The Master Race"; H-German discussion comparing Iraq in 2003 and Germany in 1945
• Jan. 6, 2004: The publisher has run out of stock on the textbook (Fulbrook). You can either order used copies from on-line suppliers (see below), or the UCEN bookstore will place an "on-demand" order (I'll ask about this in class on 1/8.) Meanwhile there is a copy on 2-hour reserve at the library. (As is the reader; the other books are on 24-hour reserve.)
• Jan. 7: I've asked the bookstore to order 18 copies of the textbook. Lecture 2 outline available (link).
• Jan 12: textbook update: The UCEN bookstore expects them Jan. 23, but sometimes the publishers ships them in lots of 2-3, and they arrive earlier. If you prepay, they will call you as soon as the books arrive.
• Jan. 12: For 1/14/04 review the following textbook pages: 12+25, 32f, 46f, 55-7, 67, 137f, 170, 180ff, 212ff, 247, 254, 282, 337f. Make a list of the acronyms of the political parties (esp. the post-1945 parties!) and what they mean, and note whether they are on the political left, in the center, or on the political right. (Maybe draw a diagram.)
  If you haven't been able to purchase the textbook, there is a copy on 2-hour reserve at the library. Or just look up the parties SPD, CDU, FDP, SED, KPD, Greens, Center, DDP. Many websites just link the the parties' pages (in German), but here is one with descriptions in English:
  • GermanCulture.com has an overview page with links to English descriptions of the parties (link)
  • The University of Bristol (UK) has a page with party logos linking to their homepages (sorry, in German) (link).
• Jan. 13: book essay handout added (also many links to the Reader TOC, and topics section, below)
• Jan. 13: electronic copy of textbook available through our library's pegasus (link - search "Fulbrook divided nation" gives you two copies, one electronic). The title link takes you to netlibrary, where you give yourself a login and password. If you just "browse" it (you can type in page numbers in the upper right), others can use it at the same time; if you "check it out," no one else can access it.
• Jan. 17: the textbook is now available in the UCEN bookstore; Böll handout available (hard copies outside my office door); for paper/book essay topic see also the section below.
• Jan. 19: L4-states (maps added 1/20), L5-parties (more images added 1/23), L6-Weimar&Nazi outlines available
• Jan. 22, 2004 Reviews for book proposal: Several students have had difficulty finding reviews of their books. If you can't find any, submit what you have, and say how you attempted to find reviews. If I still want some, I'll tell you and make suggestions about where you might find them.
• Jan. 22: L7-Experience of defeat added. For Friday, be sure to read the assigned pages in Fulbrook, and think about who is responsible for the Cold War.
• Jan. 24: L8-4 Ds & 2 Rs of Potsdam Conference added
• Jan. 26: L9-1953 & After added
• Jan. 27: Reminder: Q4 on Wednesday will be drawn from the Böll reading.
• Jan. 30: L10-West in 1950s and L11-Unite or Divide 1952-61 added (Feb 1: images added to L11)
• Feb. 1, 2004: I have to cancel my office hours on Tuesday, Feb. 3. If you were planning on coming that day, please contact me to make an appointment for Wed. (10-noon) or Thu (11-1)
• Feb. 2: L12-1960s now available. Q5 on Friday will be based on the film shown Wednesday (The Promise, see imdb; available on amazon).
• Feb. 7: please note that the book essay summaries and drafts are due on Monday, 2/9/04.
• Feb. 7: L14-60s Foreign Policy now available.
• Feb. 9: A handout for The Reader will be was distributed in class. For background, see this 1997 interview with Schlink by Ron Hogan. A 1998 interview offers some interesting detail about Schlink's life.
  Random House has information about Schlink's next book Flights of Love, a collection of seven short stories published in English in 2002 (link). A set of questions is also posted on the internet (readinggroupguide; also on amazon).
• Feb. 12: L16-Presence of Nazi Past, 1945-1960s now available
• Feb. 17: L17-Nazi Past, 1960s-80s now available, also midterm evaluation form for 2/1820/04.
• Feb. 19: L18-Arguing Theses now available (without images). Be sure to read Schneider, The Wall Jumper for Friday, 2/20. Q7 will ask what his main thesis is.
• Feb. 20: L19-Dissent in West Germany now available (images in progress added 2/22).
  After today's class I happened to read this review of a book about "German anti-militarism" (link). The author of the review argues that this German "tradition" was cemented by the unconditional defeat in World War II. (In lecture I argued that it could be seen as going back much further.)
• Feb. 23: web option handout available.
• Feb. 24: L20-DissentStasiState available. Be sure to read sources #12 & #13 for Wed.
• Feb. 25: Two talks coming up. Submit one paragraph describing what it was about, and you can get up to 4 points per talk extra credit. NOTE: no more make-ups Qs will be possible--this is your chance.
  • Feb. 26, 5pm: TALK: THE LIFE JOURNEY OF CHILD HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS
    Dr. Robert Krell (Psychiatrist, Author, Child Survivor)
    Thursday, February 26 / 5:00 P.M. / FREE
    Bronfman Family Jewish Community Center, 524 Chapala Street, Santa Barbara
    Robert Krell survived the Holocaust as a hidden child in Holland. Eventually he became a noted child psychiatrist recognized, in particular, for his scholarly research and public lectures on the psychological trauma in Holocaust survivors and their children. He co-authored an updated, translated edition of Judith Hemmendinger Feist's book, The Children of Buchenwald: Child Survivors and Their Post-War Lives (2000) which recounts the story of the 426 young survivors sent from Buchenwald to France.
  • Friday, 2-4pm, 6020 HSSB
    panel discussion "Survivors of Trauma," with Robert Krell and UCSB professors
• Feb. 12: Class mailing list "hist133@mail.lsit.ucsb.edu" now operational. First, go to this site: https://mail.lsit.ucsb.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/hist133 to enter your e-mail address and give yourself a password. Next, check your e-mail and respond to the automatic message (usually, "reply" will work) to confirm your address.
  I will send a message to that list when I add new material to this website, so you don't have to keep checking. (And I'll unsubscribe everyone when the course is over.)
  [2/17/04: 5 students have signed up; 8 total by 2/21; 9 on 2/24]
• Mar. 1, 2004: L21, L22, L23 (all about building a mass movement and the fall of the Berlin wall), and chronological handout added (no images yet).
• Mar. 4: For Friday, 3/5, be sure to read the Bornemann essay #14 in the reader, and Fulbrook chap. 13 on the East German revolution. L24 (no images yet) also added.
• Mar. 5, 7:40am: late-breaking clarification: Yes, the book summary can (should) be integrated into the final version of your paper. If you did not do this yet, don't worry, since those of you NOT doing the web option will be submitting the prospectus and the previous draft version, I can read it there.
  Web option: please only submit the hard copy version I returned to you this week, plus a disk or e-mail with the electronic version.
  Non-web: If you don't have exactly the right things with you, don't fret. Turning in the final printout in class ensures that you made the deadline. You can submit the rest this afternoon or Monday.
• Mar. 7: L25-Unification uploaded (no images yet)
• Mar. 8: first web essay uploaded: S. Ables, Gorbachev and the German Question (1995) (link); index page for web essays begun
• Mar. 9: The index page for web essays now has final versions of the essays for the student presentations (Carini, Ables, Sandhoff, Magaña), and preliminary versions for
• Mar. 9: If we have time after the presentations, we'll do Q10 on Wednesday (3/10). Read Chap. 14 of Fulbrook, esp. from p. 357 on. What factors contributed to the stability of the post-1945 German states?
• Mar. 11: FALSE ALARM: I found all of the corrected Krell-extra credit submissions. I'll return them on Friday.
• Mar. 11: exam study guide, L26-PostUnification, L27-Presentations now available
• Mar. 13: The take-home final exam will be available on Wed., 3/17, at noon on this site and at my office (check the envelope outside my door if I'm not there later in the afternoon or evening). It is designed to take only 2 hours (see exam study guide).
  It is due on Thu., 3/18, by 11am in my office, HSSB 4221.
• Mar. 13: I will be out of town until Tuesday late, so there will be no more updates to this site until Wed., 3/17, morning. I may be able to respond to e-mail Monday (3/15) night.
• Mar. 13: L28-Conclusion now available.
• Mar. 13: no information on final grades will be available until after Tue. 3/23 (at the earliest)
• Mar. 17, 2004: the final exam is available: html; pdf version for printing. Due March 18, by 11am in my office, HSSB 4221.