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German Experiences with Migration and Integration

Past and Present

6 ECTS
Seminar:  Kulturgeschichte-Einführung
Montag, 9.15 - 10.45 Uhr, Ort: LH 101/102, Veranstaltungsbeginn: 14.04.2016

Turkish-British author Moris Farhi once claimed, “all history is the history of migration”. This is certainly true for the German case, where both emigration and immigration have shaped the country’s landscape over the centuries. The recent arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees from war-torn countries in the Middle East is only the latest example of a long tradition in the country’s history. In this seminar we will deal with migration in Germany’s past and present, from the early modern period until today.
In the 17th century, German Protestant sovereigns invited persecuted Huguenots from France to settle in their territories. This was part of long-standing policy that aimed at populating the region. In the 19th century, hundreds of thousands of Germans left for the Americas for either economic or political reasons. The 20th and 21st centuries saw a veritable mass migration into the country. In the 1940s, in one of the largest forced migrations, millions of ethnic Germans had to leave their homelands in East and East Central Europe, resettling in the West. In the 1960s and 1970s guest workers from Mediterranean countries – migrated into Western Germany, thoroughly changing the cultural landscape. In the 1990s, over a million former Soviet citizens left for Germany permanently while many refugees from former Yugoslavia found temporary shelter in the country.
In class, we will not only focus on people’s motivations to come to Germany or on those reasons for leaving it. We will also look for similarities and differences while comparing historical events with the situation in Germany today.

Reading: Klaus J. Bade. Europa in Bewegung. Migration vom späten 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2000; Coerced and free migration. Global perspectives, edited by David Eltis. The making of modern freedom, 1-31. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002; Dirk Hoerder, ed. Cultures in Contact. World Migrations in the Second Millennium. Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2002; Norman M. Naimark: Fires of Hatred. Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, Cambridge, Mass. 2001
Eligibility: gute aktive Englischkenntnisse
Assessments: Klausuren
Language: English