ClassInfo

This course examines the culture and politics of West Germany through the lens of counter-cultural musical and literary production. Taking the Weimar Republic as its point of departure, it investigates: historical relations between intoxication and violence; the echoes of early 20th-century philosophical musical debates in the music of the late 60s and 70s; relations between American and German music, politics, and culture; the German response to the Vietnam War; and revolutionary politics. Over the semester, the course will trace the moves from analog to digital, from psychedelics to amphetamines, from peace and love to terrorism. The course's modules roughly follow the arc of terrorist Michael "Bommi" Baumann's memoir Wie alles anfing. Two of the modules take their names from chapters in the book: "Wie alles anfing" and "Es wird politisch." The other module takes its name (as does the course) from Bernward Vesper's unfinished essayistic novel Die Reise (1971/77), which simultaneously depicts a 24-hour LSD trip, the author's life, and the political situation in Germany in 1969. In the course, we will: read political and cultural manifestos, memoirs, essays, anecdotes, poetry, and secondary literature; listen to music of the German and American countercultural scenes; and watch films that emerged from, and deal with and depict, German countercultures of the late 60s and 70s.