German Department Research Articles

Enhancing the Study Abroad Experience through Independent Research in Germany

The last decade has seen the number of US un dergraduates who study abroad more than double (Bhandari and Chin). While Europe is stifll over whelmingly their main destination, with Germany still among the ten most popular countries, Ameri can students are increasingly being drawn to other locations, particularly in less developed parts of the world where discipline-specific academic pro grams and unique travel opportunities challenge traditional notions of the study-abroad experience. While all indications point to the number of Ameri cans who study abroad continuing to rise each year-especially with the strong support of large scale federal initiatives that are aimed at expanding the global sensibilities of American college stu dents, such as the Lincoln Commission Report call ing for one million Americans studying abroad by 2017-this increase may have a much smaller im pact in the more traditional European locations. This possibility begs the question of what can be done to continue making study in Germany specifi cally of interest for American undergraduates. One answer to this issue lies in continuing to make it not only possible but enticing for American study abroad students to undertake independent re search in Germany, both supported by pre-depar ture training as well as on-sight guidance. The Institute of International Education's an nual Open Doors report currently has Germany ranked seventh among its twenty most popular study abroad destinations for American under graduates (Bhandari and Chin). And, going back two decades, that ranking hardly changes. In 1985-86, Germany ranked fifth on the list and a decade later, in 1995-96, it ranked sixth. Since 2001, Germany has held steady at seventh place after perennial favorites like the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and France, and newer attractions like China and Argentina (Chow). While the fluctua tion in Germany's rankings is hardly alarming and these numbers should be looked at in the context of the significant overall rise in the number of Ameri can students studying abroad generally, it sfill points to a possible slight decline in interest in Ger many as an attractive study abroad destination. Within the study abroad experience, students have the opportunity to explore new intellectual and personal territory and discover others and themselves in a way that can differ dramatically from what they can do in their own culture. Discov ery of the Other can occur within the immersion ex perience itself or as a byproduct of simply being in another environment, but it can take on a more ac ademic focus through a structured research oppor tunity. Any quick review of the promotional efforts for study abroad in Germany make its attractions for students obvious: a highly modern and politically powerful player in the heart of Europe whose his tory, infrastructure, and university culture offer myriad opportunities for research. However, to help students take advantage of the opportunity to conduct independent research in Germany, faculty at the home campus, in the German department and elsewhere, as well as committed personnel in the study abroad office, need to provide the train ing and guidance that help students undertake meaningful and eventually rewarding projects abroad. Ever since the end of the Second World War, the German federal government has been admira bly proactive in attracting scholars back to the country through the cultural efforts of the Goethe Institute and the large range of scholarships that are awarded each year by the German Academic Ex change Service/DAAD, to name only the most high

“Relations Stop Nowhere”: The Common Literary Foundations of German and American Literature, 1830–1917 (review)

Reviewed by: “Relations Stop Nowhere”: The Common Literary Foundations of German and American Literature, 1830–1917 Cora Lee Kluge “Relations Stop Nowhere”: The Common Literary Foundations of German and American Literature, 1830–1917. By Hugh Ridley. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2007. Hugh Ridley, longtime member of the German Department at the University College Dublin, is known for his work on Thomas Mann, Gottfried Benn, and other figures and topics from nineteenth-century and twentieth-century German literature and literary theory. The current volume displays his broad, multidisciplinary knowledge and his wide perspective. Proposing that international comparison with the situation in German lands can lead to a better understanding of the course of American literary history, he considers the structural parallels between the two countries, each having entered the scene as a relative latecomer whose literary historians were attempting to legitimize the culture of a country caught up in expansion, conflicts, redefinitions, and crises. He points to similarities that persist into the present time, when both Germany and America must redefine their national literatures, Germany because of the reunification of 1989, and America because of its new understanding of itself as an ethnic and cultural hybrid. He also discusses a number of writers whose work is firmly situated in the German-American field. The result is not a study of influences, but rather a comparative literary history, which provides conclusive evidence—if evidence is still needed—that the focus of scholars and students of American studies must be multilingual and transnational. In Part One, “German and American Literary History,” Ridley shows that nineteenth-century intellectuals in German lands looked up to the United States for its political power and national unity, while American intellectuals respected Germans’ successful relationship to literature. Ridley’s work covers extensive territory: in Chapter 4 (“Democracy and Realism”), for example, he explores the relationship between the historical-political situation and literary realism in the two countries; and in the final section of Chapter 5 (“Hunting for American Aesthetics”), he calls for a study of the relationship between aesthetics and American Protestantism. Relatively unknown German-language criticism and contributions will interest American specialists, such as German commentary on James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales, or novels about America such as Ferdinand Kürnberger’s Der Amerikamüde (whose title he renders as “The Man Tired of America”) and Reinhold Solger’s Anton in Amerika (whose first English translation—by Lorie A. Vanchena—was published in 2006). Part Two, “The Mid-Atlantic Space,” contains three chapters. The first is a brilliant interpretation of Austrian-American writer Charles Sealsfield’s The Prairie on the Jacinto River. Ridley demonstrates its literary merit, explains its relationship to European and American traditions, and points out the reasons its author has been neglected by both. He complains “What should have been a founding text of the American myth remained unknown” (197), and he shows why this happened. This chapter is followed by one entitled “American Idylls beyond Buffalo Bill,” in which works by David Christoph Seybold, Heinrich Zschokke, Jung-Stilling, Herman Melville, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Johann Conrad Beißel, Thomas Mann, Walt Whitman, and others are discussed. And in the last chapter, “Emerson in the German and American Traditions,” where he illustrates the interaction [End Page 154] and interdependency between Goethe, Emerson, and Nietzsche, Ridley convincingly ties together traditions of separate generations and separate continents. A short review cannot do justice to Ridley’s monograph. Rich in detail and replete with important bibliographical references, it should be on the shelf of anyone interested in multicultural approaches to American Studies, both because of the quantity and quality of the material presented, and because it will inspire further research. Cora Lee Kluge University of Wisconsin–Madison Copyright © 2009 Mid-America American Studies Association

Contraindications to regional anaesthesia in obstetrics: a survey of German practice

We assessed current practice regarding indications and contraindications to regional analgesia and anaesthesia for labour and delivery in Germany. Questionnaires were mailed to the directors of 918 German departments of anaesthesiology. A total of 397 completed replies were received representing 41.3% of all deliveries in Germany. More than half of the respondents never perform spinal or epidural anaesthesia when the platelet count falls below 65x10(9)/L. Preeclampsia, which was not graded for severity, was considered an absolute contraindication to regional block by 15% and placenta praevia by 30% of respondents. If a woman had taken aspirin three days before, the numbers of respondents considering epidural anaesthesia contraindicated (40.2%) were nearly double those considering spinal anaesthesia contraindicated (21.7%) (P<0.001). For a platelet count of 79x10(9)/L, epidural anaesthesia was thought to be contraindicated by 37% and spinal anaesthesia by 22.2% (P=0.001). In departments with <500 deliveries/year, reluctance to use regional blockade was more pronounced than in departments with >1000 deliveries/year. Clinical practice varies considerably in Germany. Concerns regarding the use of regional blockade were more prevalent in hospitals with small delivery units. Indications and contraindications are not consistent in Germany and some recommendations or guidelines are needed.

First comprehensive contribution to medical ethnobotany of Western Pyrenees

BackgroundAn ethnobotanical and medical study was carried out in the Navarre Pyrenees, an area known both for its high biological diversity and its cultural significance.As well as the compilation of an ethnopharmacological catalogue, a quantitative ethnobotanical comparison has been carried out in relation to the outcomes from other studies about the Pyrenees. A review of all drugs used in the area has also been carried out, through a study of the monographs published by the institutions and organizations responsible for the safety and efficacy of medicinal plants (WHO, ESCOP, and the E Commission of the German Department of Health) in order to ascertain the extent to which the Navarre Pyrenees ethnopharmacology has been officially evaluated.MethodsFieldwork was carried out over two years, from November 2004 to December 2006. During that time we interviewed 88 local people in 40 villages. Information was collected using semi-structured ethnobotanical interviews and the data was analyzed using quantitave indexes: Ethnobotonicity Index, Shannon-Wiener's Diversity, Equitability and The Informant Consensus Factor. The official review has been performed using the official monographs published by the WHO, ESCOP and the E Commission of the German Department of Health.ResultsThe ethnobotanical and medical catalogue of the Navarre Pyrenees Area comprises 92 species, of which 39 have been mentioned by at least three interviewees. The quantitative ethnobotany results show lower values than those found in other studies about the Pyrenees; and 57.6% of the Pyrenees medical ethnobotany described does not figure in documents published by the above mentioned institutions.ConclusionThe results show a reduction in the ethnobotanical and medical knowledge in the area of study, when compared to other studies carried out in the Pyrenees. Nevertheless, the use of several species that may be regarded as possible sources for pharmacological studies is reported here such as the bark of Sambucus nigra, the roots of Fragaria vesca, or the leaves of Scrophularia nodosa. These species are not currently approved by the WHO, ESCOP and the E Commission of the German Department of Health, institutions that, apart from encouraging the greater use of plants for medicinal purposes, may help in the design of development plans for these rural areas by validating their traditional medicine.

Image as Trace: Speculations about an Undead Paradigm

Translated by Kata Gellenpeter geimer is an art historian and assistant professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (eth) Zürich. His major scholarly interests are the history of photography, image science, the “living image,” and visualization in the natural sciences. Publications in English include the editing of UnDead: Relations between the Living and the Lifeless (Preprint, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin 2003; forthcoming Kadmos, 2007).kata gellen is a PhD candidate in the Department of German at Princeton University. She is currently writing her dissertation on the figure of noise in modern German literature. Her essay “The Opaque Voice: Canetti's Foreign Tongues” is forthcoming in a collection of essays edited by William Donahue and Julian Preece called The Worlds of Elias Canetti (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007).

Departmental networks—An empirical analysis of career patterns among junior faculty in Germany

By using recruitment data from 60 German departments of business administration, networks are constructed in which the nodes are departments, and two departments are connected if they have either sent or received a scientist from one another. Different concepts of social network analysis are applied to answer a series of questions, such as the number of scientists the business departments produce, to whom they send and from whom they receive their scientists, and which role academic networks play in the career of young scientists in business administration. Regression analysis revealed that network centrality is a robust predictor of departmental reputation. The social network approach can be used to assess reputational differences among business departments, thereby providing an alternative to existing opinion surveys and research rankings.

Beliefs about Language Learning of Foreign Language- Major University Students

Beliefs are a central construct in every discipline which deals with human behavior and learning. Teachers’ beliefs influence their consciousness, teaching attitude, teaching methods and teaching policies. Teachers’ beliefs also strongly influence teaching behavior and, finally, learners’ development. The formation of teachers’ educational beliefs in language teaching/learning process will exert an indiscernible effect on forming effective teaching methods and will bring about the improvement of learners’ language learning abilities (Horwitz, 1985). The Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) was administered to a total of 248 foreign language-major university students at five universities. The participants were in the departments of English, German, French, Japanese and Arabic and they were all going to be the teachers of the language they were learning. Although most of the item alternatives drew slightly different percentages of responses, the overall pattern of responses remained strikingly consistent across language groups. The present findings indicate that students hold a range of beliefs with varying degrees of validity; in some cases, the term “myth” might be a more accurate characterization. Some results reported here may surprise language teaching educators and teacher trainers; others probably confirm their experiences and intuitions. (P<.05). It was observed that the results of this research were similar to those of other research.

Distribution and Outcome of Symptomatic Stenoses and Occlusions in Patients With Acute Cerebral Ischemia

To describe the distribution of steno-occlusive disease and the associated rate of recurrence in patients with acute cerebral ischemia. An inception cohort was prospectively recruited after an index event and followed up to assess recurrent stroke and death up to 1 year after the event. Eleven German departments of neurology with acute stroke units. A total of 4157 patients who experienced an acute ischemic stroke or a transient ischemic attack and had complete cerebrovascular examination results. Follow-up information could be obtained in 85.3% of these patients. Symptomatic vessel occlusions were associated with a high mortality rate and were found most often in the proximal internal carotid artery (6.5% of patients), the M1 segment of the middle cerebral artery (3.7%), and the vertebral artery (3.0%). Symptomatic stenosis of 50% to 99% of the internal carotid artery was found in 308 patients (7.4%), and 272 patients (6.5%) had symptomatic intracranial stenosis. The highest rates of recurrent stroke during the first 3 days occurred in patients with symptomatic carotid and intracranial occlusions. Overall, 82 (8.0%) of 1027 patients with symptomatic cerebrovascular disease experienced a recurrent stroke between day 4 and 1 year, but no significant differences in recurrent stroke rates could be found when comparing different locations of steno-occlusive disease. Our study provides representative data on the distribution and outcome of steno-occlusive disease in patients with acute cerebral ischemia. In contrast to prior studies in more selected populations, the rate of recurrent stroke in patients with symptomatic intracranial stenosis was not elevated compared with that of patients without steno-occlusive disease.

Gyneco-psychosomatic counseling in Germany and Switzerland—aims and state of the art

Objective To investigate actual counseling models for gynecological patients in Switzerland and in Germany. Methods A questionnaire investigating psychosomatic care was sent to all Swiss ( N=183) and German ( N=1078) departments of gynecology, obstetrics, and/or endocrinology. Results One hundred twenty-eight (27%) completed questionnaires from Germany and 57 (31%) from Switzerland were available for statistical evaluation. Eighty-seven percent of the answering clinics from Switzerland and 93% of those from Germany (ns) considered psychosomatic counseling for gynecological and obstetrical patients as very important or important. Seventy-two percent of the Swiss and 70% of the German departments (ns) offered psychosomatic support. Models of counseling varied greatly between types of hospitals and both countries. Less than 15% of the medical doctors had a formation for psychosomatic counseling. Conclusion Actual possibilities seem to be below the need for psychosomatic care. An adequate formation of medical doctors and considering the effects of psychosomatic care in the discussion on cost reduction for medical treatment would help to improve counseling structures.

The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877-1959 (review)

Reviewed by: The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877–1959 Michael Brenner Anthony David . The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877–1959. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003. Pp. 451. Salman Schocken was the German version of the American dream: a poor Jew from the Prussian eastern provinces moves to a small town in Saxony, builds up one of Weimar Germany's leading chains of department stores, and emerges as an architectural pioneer who has Erich Mendelsohn build the most exciting Bauhaus-style department stores. He becomes a Zionist visionary and a leading spirit behind the rise of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, builds up a publishing house that serves as intellectual comfort during German Jewry's darkest hours, emerges as the publisher of Franz Kafka and a keen promoter of Shmuel Yosef Agnon for the Nobel Prize. As if this were not enough, he founds an institute for medieval Hebrew literature which searches for the Hebrew Nibelungenlied, possesses one of the most precious private collections of rare books in Judaica as well as German culture, and is responsible for the emergence of Israel's leading newspaper Ha'aretz. In other words, a biographer's dream. The self-made man from Posen, whom Hannah Arendt called the "Jewish Bismarck" (p. 204), was one of the most versatile figures in an era with no lack of versatile personalities. He was not just the chairman of the Organization of German Department Stores but a person deeply instilled with the ambition to turn his clients into educated people, into Bildungsbürger like himself, and to make his stores aesthetic masterworks of the new Bauhaus style. Next to the underwear counter he would give out poems by Goethe, and with the profit he made, he would support poor writers, such as the young Agnon, who had moved to Germany from Palestine before World War I. His Schocken Library, a predecessor of modern paperback series, produced one piece of essential Jewish culture after the other in Nazi Germany and became a remarkable monument to spiritual endurance in times of horror. The Patron himself had to leave Nazi Germany, and as he was an active Zionist, it was clear where his path would lead. The department stores remained in the hands of "Aryan" trustees until the end of the Thousand-Year Reich, so Schocken concentrated on his favorite endeavors: a research institute on medieval Hebrew poetry, the preservation of his unique library, and his involvement with the Hebrew University. He founded a publishing house in Israel, bought the newspaper Ha'aretz for his son Gershon (who would turn it into Israel's leading paper), and had [End Page 457] Erich Mendelsohn build his private home and his library, which became the unofficial intellectual center of Jerusalem. In the words of his biographer, "it was the only place in town where guests could expect such a high quality of cakes, wines, and light snacks. Being across the street from Golda Meir's residence gave it an added aura of mystery. It was a piece of prewar central Europe lodged in the heart of a Spartan state" (p. 384). As early as the 1930s Schocken suggested S. Y. Agnon, whom he had supported in the difficult years back in Germany, for the Nobel Prize and used all his connections in Sweden and in the literary world to promote this goal. He published Martin Buber and Franz Kafka, and he financed Gershom Scholem's research on Kabbalah. Still Salman Schocken was not a happy man in interwar Palestine. He was keenly aware of how little difference he was able to make there, in contrast to his time in Weimar Germany, and how little recognition he received. "In Germany I was always a part of things" he told the philosopher Hugo Bergmann. In Palestine, he felt like a nobody, writes David (p. 304). In 1939 Schocken left Jerusalem for New York and would thereafter return to Israel only for visits. In the United States, he had high hopes of achieving with American Jews what he failed to do in Palestine: to turn them into Bildungsbürger, who would read and produce a Jewish culture comparable to that found in...

Women in the Fortress Europe: Feminist Crime Fiction as Antifascist Performative

katrin sieg is Associate Professor affiliated with the bmw Center for German and European Studies and the German department at Georgetown University. She is the author of Exiles, Eccentrics, Activists: Women in Contemporary German Theatre (1994) and Ethnic Drag: Performing Race,Nation, Sexuality in West Germany (2002, both with University of Michigan Press). She has published in the areas of contemporary German culture,theater, and feminist theory. Currently, she is completing a book on German popular culture and feminist critiques of globalization, titled Sexing Germany.

The Invention of Trauma in German Romanticism

77 This essay has benefited from many readers and listeners, including graduate students in a course on trauma in fall 2001 and the participants of the first annual Bloomington EighteenthCentury Studies Workshop in May 2002, as well as audiences at lectures in the German departments at New York University, Johns Hopkins University, and Princeton University. In particular, I would like to thank Michel Chaouli, Elliott Schreiber, and Dror Wahrman for their rich criticism and ideas. 1. For the English context, see DrorWahrman,TheMaking of theModern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-CenturyBritain (NewHaven, Conn., 2004), and Deidre Shauna Lynch,The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of InnerMeaning (Chicago, 1998). For a three-step development of notions of selfhood in France between 1700, 1770, and the early 1800s, see Jan Goldstein, “Mutations of the Self in the Old Regime and Postrevolutionary France: FromAme toMoi to LeMoi,” in Biographies of Scientific Objects, ed. LorraineDaston (Chicago, 2000), pp. 86–117. For the German context, see Fritz Breithaupt, “Goethe and the Ego,”Goethe Yearbook 11 (2002): 77–109. The Invention of Trauma in German Romanticism

German literature of the 1990s and beyond: normalization and the Berlin Republic

This book presents a comprehensive, lively account of recent developments in German fiction at a moment when-for the first time in many years-German authors are once again the subject of international attention and acclaim. It introduces English-speaking audiences to the complex dilemmas that are shaping the ways in which Germans are presently defining themselves, their difficult past, and the new 'Berlin Republic.' The theme that runs throughout the volume is the ongoing debate on German 'normalization.' In offering a wide-ranging consideration of contemporary German literature, the book complements a broad discussion of trends in present-day German politics, society, and culture with detailed readings of texts by internationally renowned figures as W. G. Sebald, Gunter Grass, Martin Walser, Marcel Beyer, Ingo Schulze, Judith Hermann, Thomas Brussig, and Bernhard Schlink, and by newer, emerging writers. Topics include the literary debates of the 1990s, the literary market and marketing, literary responses to the former East and West Germany in the age of globalization and to the Nazi past and portrayals of 'ordinary Germans,' depictions of 'German wartime suffering,' contemporary writing on 'Jewish fates' and efforts to revive the 'German-Jewish symbiosis,' and finally, the recent wave of writing about the provinces. Stuart Taberner is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of German at the University of Leeds, UK.

Popular Theater and Society in Tsarist Russia by E. Anthony Swift (review)

MLR, 100.2, 2005 579 Friedrich Ohly's organization of petitions against abuses, Victor Suchy's sacking for 'political unreliability', Rudolf Majut's Schreibverbot, or Jan Aler hiding Jews in his Amsterdam home. Linked to this is the careful attempt to include Jewish scholars even though these may, in their own day, not have received institutional recognition. The point is well made that, though often spurned by the scholarly establishment, Jewish scholars none the less wrote for and were received by their own circles. All this is recorded without value judgements, but there is clearly an intention to provide the materials for future critical discussion. If one were to have a quibble with the conception of this project, it would probably lie with its chronological limitations: why 1800 to 1950? The reason adduced for the terminusa quo is that the earliest university German departments date from the early nineteenth century. However, given that the editors are at pains not to link their selec? tion criteria with institutional hierarchies, it would have been good to trace the roots ofthe subject back to the earliest explorations by Merula, Goldast, and others of their generation. The number of early scholars would not have been so great as to be prohibitive . At the other end, I am unconvinced by the lengthy explanations given forthe decision to close the work at 1950; while there is no doubting the observation that the immediate post-war years marked a turning point and a new beginning, and therefore can be seen as the end of an era, it is not obvious why this makes the new era any less part of the history of Germanistik. One suspects that the real reason lies elsewhere. On the one hand there may have been a consideration of space, at least in the paper form of the Lexikon, because of the explosion of new university departments around the world in the last fiftyyears, while on the other there will have been the politi? cal dynamic of who might be offended by not being included. However, the former problem could have been solved by a mechanism already employed in this project, including less important scholars only on the CD-ROM, while the latter would be alleviated by the simple expedient of not including scholars who are still alive at the time of going to print. The year 2000 would have been a perfectly serviceable cut-off point, and the usefulness of the work would have been enhanced if its chronological scope had been broadened in this way. However, this is a magnificent reference work which will serve the subject well, and ought to be in every serious library. University of Regensburg Graeme Dunphy Popular Theater and Society in Tsarist Russia. By E. Anthony Swift. (Studies on the History of Society and Culture, 44) Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: Uni? versity of California Press. 2002. xvi + 346pp. ?32.95. ISBN 0-520-22594-5. By the turn ofthe nineteenth century,the popular theatre movement in Russia faroutstripped in scale and significance its counterparts in any Western European country. Long seen as a means ofenlightening the masses and bridging the cultural gap between the narod (people) and the intelligentsia, and embraced by the 'rational leisure' move? ment as a diversion from less civilized popular pursuits, the idea of 'people's theatres' gained momentum in the decades following the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861, and flourished with the end of the Imperial Theatres Monopoly in 1882. It is to this politically and socially charged phenomenon that E. Anthony Swift turns in his stimulating and readable study. Dividing his work into chapters on the urban theatrical land? scape, cultural politics, censorship and repertoire, temperance organizations, workers' theatres, and audience reception, Swift charts the emergence ofpeople's theatres while assessing their significance politically and culturally, and as an indicator of the pro? found social change that occurred in late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century Russia. 580 Reviews It is perhaps the sheer scale of his subject matter that engenders some of the limitations of Swift's work. Although he begins his study with a brief discussion of the skomorokhi and popular theatrical culture prior to the Great Reforms...

Early Germanic literature and culture

The first volume of this set views the development of writing in German with respect to broad aspects of the early Germanic past, drawing on a range of disciplines including archaeology, anthropology, and philology in addition to literary history. The first part considers the whole concept of Germanic antiquity and the way in which it has been approached, examines classical writings about Germanic origins and the earliest Germanic tribes, and looks at the two great influences on the early Germanic world: the confrontation with the Roman Empire and the displacement of Germanic religion by Christianity. A chapter on orality -- the earliest stage of all literature -- provides a bridge to the earliest Germanic writings. The second part of the book is devoted to written Germanic -- rather than German -- materials, with a series of chapters looking first at the Runic inscriptions, then at Gothic, the first Germanic language to find its way onto parchment (in Ulfilas's Bible translation). The topic turns finally to what we now understand as literature, with general surveys of the three great areas of early Germanic literature: Old Norse, Old English, and Old High and Low German. A final chapter is devoted to the Old Saxon Heliand.Contributors: T. M. Andersson, Heinrich Beck, Graeme Dunphy, Klaus Duwel, G. Ronald Murphy, Adrian Murdoch, Brian Murdoch, Rudolf Simek, Herwig Wolfram.Brian Murdoch and Malcolm Read both teach in the German Department of the University of Stirling in Scotland.

Postoperative analgesia in children – current practice in Germany

German departments of anaesthesia were surveyed to determine current practice of postoperative pain management in children. The response rate of the survey was 58.6%: Questionnaires of 383 departments in which paediatric surgery was performed could be analyzed. 37.3% operated an acute pain service (APS). In 58.8% of the hospitals, postoperative pain management in children was mainly performed by surgeons or pediatricians. Anaesthesiologists or an APS were in charge for pain management in children in 38.6% of the institutions. Non-opioid analgesics were the drugs most widely used (93.4%), whereas i.v. opioids were never used in 20.9% of the hospitals and used less than once a week in 28.7%. The intramuscular route was chosen at least occasionally by 27.7% of the respondents. Peripheral and central regional techniques were performed in most of the departments, however, frequency of use varied considerably between hospitals running or not running an APS. The majority performed the techniques of regional anaesthesia less than once a week. The basic primary quality criterion of pain therapy, a regular measurement and documentation of pain scores, was performed in only 4% of the institutions. Paediatric pain management does not meet quality criteria and standards of care already established in adults. In the future, additional education of the medical staff considering analgesic techniques and measurement of pain scores has to be emphasized.

Change in anaesthetic practice for Caesarean section in Germany

Initial data from 1996 revealed that in contrast to several other countries general anaesthesia was the preferred anaesthetic technique for Caesarean section in Germany. However, anaesthetic practice for Caesarean section has changed during the last decades world-wide. This investigation was performed to obtain more actual data on anaesthetic procedures in obstetric patients in German hospitals. Questionnaires on the practice of anaesthesia for Caesarean section were mailed to 918 German departments of anaesthesiology. Furthermore, the survey evaluated severe perioperative complications in obstetric patients. The 397 completed replies in this survey represent 41.3% of all German deliveries in 2002. Spinal anaesthesia is now the most common technique (50.5%) for elective Caesarean section. In case of urgent and emergency Caesarean, delivery figures decrease to 34.6% and 4.8%, respectively. Epidural anaesthesia is performed in 21.6% of scheduled and 13.2% and 1.0% of non-scheduled urgent or emergency Caesarean sections, respectively. Four maternal deaths and several non-fatal episodes of gastric content aspiration were reported by the respondents. Compared to data obtained 6 years ago a significant increase in regional anaesthesia for Caesarean section has developed, with spinal anaesthesia being the preferred technique. Surveys can help to initiate discussion and improve current practice of anaesthetic care.

Introduction to TRANSIT: Inaugural Issue Special Topic: Migration, Culture, and the Nation-State

This first issue of TRANSIT grew out of a conference titled “Goodbye, Germany? Migration, Culture, and the Nation-State”, which was held at the University of California, Berkeley, October 28-30, 2004. The conference was organized by the UC Berkeley German Department and the Goethe Institut - San Francisco, in collaboration with the Institute for European Studies, the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Pacific Film Archive, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. This event was part of an ongoing research focus on “Multicultural Germany” in Berkeley’s German Department, which includes a sourcebook publication entitled Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 1955-2005, forthcoming from the University of California Press in 2006, as well as a research archive and a lecture series.

A Companion to the Works of Heinrich von Kleist

For over 150 years, Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) has been one of the most widely read and performed German authors. His status in the literary canon is firmly established, but he has always been one of Germany's most contentiously discussed authors. Today's critical debate on his unique prose narratives and dramas is as heated as ever. Many critics regard Kleist as a lone presager of the aesthetics and philosophies of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century modernism. Yet there can be no question that he responds in his works and letters to the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates of his time. During the last thirty years, the scholarship on Kleist's work and life has departed from the existentialist wave of the 1950s and early 1960s and opened up new avenues for coming to terms with his unusual talent. The present volume brings together the most important and innovative of these newer scholarly approaches: the essays include critically informed, up-to-date interpretations of Kleist's most-discussed stories and dramas. Other contributions analyze Kleist's literary means and styles and their theoretical underpinnings. They include articles on Kleist's narrative and theatrical technique, poetic and aesthetic theory, philosophical and political thought, and insights from new biographical research. Contributors: Jeffrey L. Sammons, Jost Hermand, Anthony Stephens, Bianca Theisen, Hinrich C. Seeba, Bernhard Greiner, Helmut J. Schneider, Tim Mehigan, Susanne Zantop, Hilda M. Brown, and Sean Allan. Bernd Fischer is Professor of German and Head of the Department of German at Ohio State University.

La Renaissance culturelle juive: Europe centrale et orientale 1897-1930 (review)

Reviewed by: La Renaissance culturelle juive: Europe centrale et orientale 1897–1930 Alan Astro La Renaissance culturelle juive: Europe centrale et orientale 1897–1930, by Delphine Bechtel. Paris: Bélin, 2001. 319 pp. The author of this book is one of a group of younger researchers who have done much to further academic study of Yiddish language and literature in Paris. Delphine Bechtel has established Yiddish in the conservative bastion of the German department at the Sorbonne; Carole Ksiazenicer-Matheron has incorporated Yiddish into comparative literature courses at Université de Paris III; Gilles Rozier, author of Moyshe Broderzon: un écrivain yiddish d’avant-garde (Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1999, 280 pp.), has helped reinvigorate the Medem Library in Paris. Indeed, Medem has just published the first major bilingual dictionary of Yiddish to come out in several decades: the Dictionnaire yiddish-français by Yitskhok Niborski and Bernard Vaisbrot (2002, 632 p.), which incorporates nearly all the Yiddish lexical items in Uriel Weinreich’s Yiddish-English-English-Yiddish dictionary of 1968 and Alexander Harkavy’s Yiddish-English-Hebrew dictionary of 1928, with an added number of words and expressions of Hebrew-Aramaic and Slavic origin. Niborski and Vaisbrot’s dictionary is testimony to the major importance of Paris as a present-day Yiddish academic center, perhaps following right behind New York and Jerusalem. Bechtel’s work is also something of a landmark. It is an excellent study of the influence of Yiddish literature and Yiddish cultural models on German-speaking Jewry. For example, she goes well beyond the usual study of Hasidism in Martin Buber to consider carefully his misconstrual and mistranslation of Yiddish sources, and she couples this with examination of the little-remembered spate of translations of Yiddish literature into German in the first part of the twentieth century. Sandor Gilman, in Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), rendered our field a major service by surveying the strange symptoms wrought by the repression of Yiddish among German-speaking Jews; Bechtel goes one step further by analyzing a fruitful lifting of that repression: the [End Page 162] encounter with Yiddish literature and culture, which led some elements among German-speaking Jewry to a reinvention of their collective identity. Then Bechtel complements this study of Yiddish among German-speaking Jews with a careful examination of the Yiddish writers living in Germany: the émigré authors in Berlin after World War I, such as Kvitko, Kulbak, Bergelson and Der Nister, many of whom later settled and were liquidated in the Soviet Union. This excellent book, unfortunately, suffers from a major flaw: its title, easily translated as “The Jewish Cultural Rebirth: Central and Eastern Europe, 1897–1930.” The title is a veritable example of deceitful marketing, by suggesting the book addresses all major Jewish developments in Europe east of the Rhine during the years indicated; however, the focus is almost exclusively on Jews living in the German-speaking lands, with developments among their fellows in Eastern Europe being presented either as background information or as parallels to German-Jewish occurrences. Indeed, the very title of the book, “The Jewish Cultural Rebirth,” comes from the name of a 1910 article by Buber, which argued for artistic and cultural renewal of Jewish life by promoting what Bechtel calls “inter-Ashkenazic contact,” between German- and Yiddish-speaking Jews. But whereas Buber and some other German-speaking Jewish intellectuals argued for alienated and assimilatory Jews to restore themselves through a connection to elements derived from a supposedly more authentic Jewish East (e.g., Hassidism in Buber’s case, the restoration of ancient Jewish territorial sovereignty in Herzl’s vision), Yiddish-speaking Jews looked westward not to restore themselves but to modernize, to accede not to a rebirth but to a revolution. Of course, the major exception is the implantation of political Zionism in Eastern Europe, whereby a Jewish revival program from the West was adopted by Jews wishing to “re-orientalize” and authenticate themselves. But only a minority of Zionists were Yiddishists, and Bechtel’s concern lies primarily with Yiddish culture and its influence. Bechtel thus foregrounds Peretz’ urging Jews not to write in...