Heidelberg at home 

During the summer holidays, I attended an online DAAD German Language Course at Heidelberg University. Being awarded the DAAD scholarship for a short term summer language course was a truly humbling experience. My tutor was very friendly, helpful and engaging. In addition, the participants in the seminars helped me to stretch and challenge myself when it came to German grammar and German conversational skills and key vocabulary. The fact that interactive online virtual excursions also took place was crucial in establishing my desire to learn German, not just as a skill but as a mechanism for conversation and cultural engagement, but also as a stepping stone towards a stronger cultural understanding of German history, language and culture. Most strikingly, the online excursion to Schwetzingen Palace enabled me to learn about architecture and the comparisons between French and English garden architecture.

I also had the opportunity to learn that Schwetzingen Palace is home to Schwetzingen Moschee, a sign of religious and cultural tolerance even in the 18th Century. Voltaire also visited the Palace which was fascinating for me to find out! Another key highlight was the excursion to the Schwarzwald during which I seized the opportunity to learn about the effects of climate change, good and bad. For instance, I found out that over the years due to pollution the forest has been affected, however, Freiburg im Breisgau is an ecological city that prides itself in being a green German city, that housed Erasmus the renowned Dutch scholar! Furthermore, together with the rest of the attendees, I saw a Tudor Era house from the 1500s and another from the 1600s and learnt about traditional women’s fashion.

During the lessons, I pushed myself to speak German a vast majority of the time which accelerated my knowledge of German grammar and language. Similarly to the opening ceremony, in the closing ceremony there was a concert, however, more surprisingly, there featured comedic performances and heart touching music to celebrate the fruition of our German language learning adventure! I truly felt at home in the heart of Heidelberg even though I was studying all the way from sunny Kent!

Note to readers: Look out for another riveting blog coming soon about my experience so far in Heidelberg for my year abroad!

As a second year student of Comparative Literature, I launched myself into a series of online conferences. German is my chosen language of study as part of my Comparative Literature degree and so during the Summer of 2020, I seized the much awaited opportunity to attend the online student conference webinar: Gemeinschaft 2020. The English translation of Gemeinschaft is community. Four key speakers engaged in a series of talks, representing several universities and their current research topics. One of the first key speakers, Abby Ralston from King’s College London gave a talk on her research paper on the Evolution of German Women throughout the Weimar Republic. I was captivated to learn from this talk that before the First World War, women were predominantly domesticised and only a select few had jobs as seamstresses. The SPD advocated women’s rights to vote through advertisement in newspapers and publications that sparked the 1895 Movement of Women. In 1914, women would be expected to maintain the home and sustain Germany on the Homefront, as they were often employed in munitions factories and many sought employment as nurses and administrative staff. Despite the strong competence of women in these roles, the female civic duty was ultimately rejected by the Reich which instead felt that women and especially working women, should be assigned to more traditional roles to help promote the traditional family unit. Even though women had their own independent careers, Kaiser Wilhelm made no mention to grant women the right to vote. As a result of this decision, many women felt deceived and therefore developed a growing mistrust of the Reich. Hence, a vast majority of women made petitions and signs; they engaged in protests which included rallies and riots. By 1918, there were riots which spanned across the whole of Germany, from Berlin to Hamburg and even across to Munich.

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A journey across the German Language!   Sara Karim

I’m Sara, I’m going to enter my second year next year in September 2020. I study BA Comparative Literature with German as my chosen language. Over the course of the lockdown period, I set up an online German language learning initiative designed to help students to improve their German vocabulary, speaking and grammar skills. The sessions have been very enjoyable so far, with a range of activities explored with UCL students of all levels of German. Time zones were managed as well, since the initiative has had good feedback from the department and from the participants who were from a variety of different time zones, including from London, Kent, Lancashire, Milan, Peru, Moscow and Singapore. Despite the current pandemic situation that features uncertainty, what this pandemic has also shown me is the strength and courage of students to keep learning German in a dynamic atmosphere and in a fun and creative manner. As the sessions continue, I am becoming more aware that teamwork can prevail even during the toughest of times. What is more apparent is also the determination to learn from experiences and to be constantly creative. So far, for me, it has been a very rewarding experience to sustain and inspire an established group of students that strive to learn more about different cultures.

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By SELCS Language Co-ordinators (Marie Fournier, Anne Grydehøj, Helga Hlaðgerður Lúthersdóttir, Joana Jacob Ramalho, Christina Massaccesi, Marga Navarrete, Mazal Oaknín, Dagmar Paulus, Christine Sas)

Some students may feel that the lockdown has bereft them of essential face to face contact time with peers and tutors to develop fluency and gain a better understanding of the languages they study. We have all been adjusting to these changing times and finding our way around this conundrum too and would like to invite you all to think creatively and share with each other how you have been practising your Danish, Dutch, French, German, Icelandic, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Swedish, this vast array of fascinating languages on offer in SELCS!

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