FYSP 160 - Berlin: 20th-Century City

FC SSCI WINT

4 credits
During the twentieth century, Berlin was the capital of a world empire, a democracy, a Nazi dictatorship, a divided city on the front lines of the Cold War and finally, the symbolic center of reunified Europe. Over this time, the city and its residents were witnesses to tragedy, turmoil, and innovation. Students will learn about the central events and figures of Berlin’s twentieth century history, but even more so we will be focused on ordinary people including shoppers who visited the city’s glittering department stores. Jews who hid to escape Nazi persecution, Turkish “guest workers” who moved to Berlin to work in the 1960s and 1970s and stayed to build lives and the students and creatives who treated the newly reunified city as a stage for experimentation after the end of the Cold War.