Undergraduate German 2024-2025

Students will gain detailed knowledge and understanding of the fascinating political and cultural developments and historical events in 20th century Germany.

They will be introduced in weekly lectures and tutorials to a variety of texts and contemporary films.

This course is taught in English and normally taken in conjunction with GM1054 German for Beginners 1. It is specifically recommended to students with the intention to proceed with German Studies beyond level one.

No pre-requisites are required.

This module is designed for students with an SCE H in German or equivalent. The course develops receptive and productive oral and written German language skills. Students who are considering applying for entry to German Honours must take this course.

This course involves intensive language study. Upon successful registration to this course, you are expected to complete a short online entry test on MyAberdeen to ensure that you are registered for the most appropriate course for your language ability. You will not be able to access the course site until you have completed this short test.

It is strongly recommended that you complete this test at the earliest opportunity as your timetable/course selections may be subject to change if your language ability would be better suited to an alternative course. You will be informed of this as soon as you complete the test.

The short entry test does not count toward your overall grade for this course.

It is recommended (subject to individual entry test results) that:

• Students who have no experience of German register for GM1054: German for Beginners 1
• Students who have studied German to National 5 level (or equivalent) register for GM1054: German for Beginners 1

Students who have studied German to Higher level (or equivalent) register for GM1050 German Language 1

Learn more about German 20th-century literature, dealing with the events that shaped German and European history. As in all good literature, we will discuss universal themes and topics covering all of the most important aspects of modern life.  

This language course provides students with a sound foundation in German (grammar and vocabulary). It enables students to understand the gist of authentic written and spoken German and to speak and write about familiar topics with a degree of accuracy and fluency.

No previous knowledge of German is required, but this course is also for students which took German at school before, on any level lower than Higher or A-level.

With 3 Language Classes and 1 Language Practical per week this course encourages and supports students to develop their personal self-study strategies.

This course involves intensive language study. Upon successful registration to this course, you are expected to complete a short online entry test on MyAberdeen to ensure that you are registered for the most appropriate course for your language ability. You will not be able to access the course site until you have completed this short test.

It is strongly recommended that you complete this test at the earliest opportunity as your timetable/course selections may be subject to change if your language ability would be better suited to an alternative course. You will be informed of this as soon as you complete the test.

The short entry test does not count toward your overall grade for this course.

It is recommended (subject to individual entry test results) that:

• Students who have no experience of German register for GM1054: German for Beginners 1
• Students who have studied German to National 5 level (or equivalent) register for GM1054: German for Beginners 1
• Students who have studied German to Higher level (or equivalent) register for GM1050 German Language 1
  

This module is designed for students with an SCE H in German or equivalent. The course develops receptive and productive oral and written German language skills. Students who are considering applying for entry to German Honours must take this course. The course builds on GM1050.

This language course provides students with a sound foundation in German (grammar and vocabulary). It enables students to understand the gist of authentic written and spoken German and to speak and write about familiar topics with a degree of accuracy and fluency.

No previous knowledge of German is required, but this course is also for students which took German at school before, on any level lower than Higher or A-level.

With 3 Language Classes and 1 Language Practical per week this course encourages and supports students to develop their personal self-study strategies.

The course consists of language classes leading to advanced communicative competence in German and it will include the analysis of contemporary texts drawn from a variety of contexts. This course may be taken only by students who have completed the German for Beginners courses.

This level two language course will build on and extend students' fluency and written skills in German.

Learn more about modern German history and culture while also extending your skills in reading German texts. 

The intention of the course is to extend and reinforce further students' command of German grammar, vocabulary and syntactic structures, and to introduce various styles of written and spoken German. The course builds on the work done in GM2040 and  is intended only for continuing beginners. 

Building on work done in GM 2042, the course will develop further language skills.

What does it mean to be human? Writers have explored this question by turning to the nonhuman, and to realms of experience that modern human life excludes. The course examines literary works in relation to early twentieth century thought, society and culture in order to understand writers' discontentment with modern life. The course involves reading some key works of German literary modernism, by authors such as Döblin, Kafka, Rilke, Musil, and Hesse, alongside works by influential thinkers of this period such as Nietzsche, Simmel and Freud.

In recent decades, environmental crisis has become a global concern. In this course we examine how literary writers have engaged with issues such as pollution, nuclear disaster and climate change. If we are to prevent future environmental disaster we need more than an understanding of the scientific facts – we need to understand how attitudes towards the environment are culturally shaped, and how environmental discourse is generated, debated and circulated.

This junior honours language course will build on and extend students' written skills and fluency in German.

This course offers advanced German language learning at Level 3. The course runs for only the first semester.

This course, which includes both fiction and documentary film, considers the strong political dimension of 21st-century German and Austrian filmmaking, as contemporary German and Austrian filmmakers not only engage with societal and historical issues in their home countries, but also turn their attention to global problems such as modern-day food production, the refugee crisis, and the global economy. The course will include films by Fatih Akin, Ruth Beckermann, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Valeska Grisebach, Carmen Losmann, Christian Petzold, and Hans Weingartner.

This course will examine several landmark texts of modern Austrian literature and, indeed, world literature. We will look at Arthur Schnitzler’s examination of bourgeois hypocrisy in Fräulein Else, Franz Kafka’s dystopian presentation of an individual versus a powerful bureaucracy in Das Schloss, Ingeborg Bachmann’s depiction of a female subject’s struggle for identity in Malina, and Thomas Bernhard’s critique of the long shadow of Austria’s past in Heldenplatz. We will examine the works’ social and historical contexts, as well as the authors’ innovative style and use of language.

What does it mean to be human? Writers have explored this question by turning to the nonhuman, and to realms of experience that modern human life excludes. The course examines literary works in relation to early twentieth century thought, society and culture in order to understand writers' discontentment with modern life. The course involves reading some key works of German literary modernism, by authors such as Döblin, Kafka, Rilke, Musil, and Hesse, alongside works by influential thinkers of this period such as Nietzsche, Simmel and Freud.

In recent decades, environmental crisis has become a global concern. In this course we examine how literary writers have engaged with issues such as pollution, nuclear disaster and climate change. If we are to prevent future environmental disaster we need more than an understanding of the scientific facts – we need to understand how attitudes towards the environment are culturally shaped, and how environmental discourse is generated, debated and circulated.

This level 4 course is specifically aimed at students who want to improve their German Language skills, but who are not taking German as  part of a single or joint Honours programme in German Studies. It consists of a German language class, a composition class and an oral class.

Students engage in their first larger project of independent research.

Building on the skills gained during the Junior Honours language course and before, this module expands and refines German language expertise in writing, reading, speaking and listening, to an advanced level, for their final exit written and oral exam in German.

This course, which includes both fiction and documentary film, considers the strong political dimension of 21st-century German and Austrian filmmaking, as contemporary German and Austrian filmmakers not only engage with societal and historical issues in their home countries, but also turn their attention to global problems such as modern-day food production, the refugee crisis, and the global economy. The course will include films by Fatih Akin, Ruth Beckermann, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Valeska Grisebach, Carmen Losmann, Christian Petzold, and Hans Weingartner.

This course will examine several landmark texts of modern Austrian literature and, indeed, world literature. We will look at Arthur Schnitzler’s examination of bourgeois hypocrisy in Fräulein Else, Franz Kafka’s dystopian presentation of an individual versus a powerful bureaucracy in Das Schloss, Ingeborg Bachmann’s depiction of a female subject’s struggle for identity in Malina, and Thomas Bernhard’s critique of the long shadow of Austria’s past in Heldenplatz. We will examine the works’ social and historical contexts, as well as the authors’ innovative style and use of language.

Students engage in their first larger project of independent research. The dissertation is to be written in German and followed by a 20 minute Viva.