GERM 3450

This interdisciplinary course focuses on writers, artists, filmmakers, and intellectuals whose work responded to the rise of fascism in the 20th century. Primarily, they confronted fascism and critiqued it, hence the title of the course. In 1935, appalled by the political and social changes that deformed the culturally thriving Weimar Republic into Hitler’s Third Reich, German playwright Bertolt Brecht began writing a compilation of theatrical scenes inspired by his times – an artistic project created “in order to see this people, compiled of what sort of men, in which kind of condition, with what type of thoughts, that [Hitler] could gather them under his flag.” In this seminar, our inquiry will follow and expand on Brecht's line of questioning in order to gain insight to the rise of fascism as a new political mass movement that would, like no other, shape and darken the 20th century. Taking into account the movement’s European roots, which would culminate in Germany, we will query the political, ideological, and antisemitic practices of fascism in order to gain a broader understanding of its national and global impact. Our historical trajectory will lead us from the early theoretical conceptions of this new kind of nationalist ideology to an exploration of the life and suffering within the Third Reich, to the atrocities of the Holocaust, and toward post-war attempts of historical Aufarbeitung [working-through the past] in and beyond Germany. Finally, we will discuss the lasting necessity to continue this work of working-through and contemporary concerns that democratic societies face in view of neo-fascist movements.