A List of . . . stuff?

Thanks to Aleatha, Thora, and all other bloggers who use lists, I've decided also to make a list of the books and other media that made the biggest impact on my career as a Germanist in something approaching chronological order. Since it is about German texts, the faint of heart should tread carefully.

1. Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther : Read it in 11th grade. Loved it, mostly for its melancholy self pity. And the fact that it inspired a rash of suicides in Europe - young men dressed in blue jackets and yellow pants offing themselves with pistols but making sure their copy of Emilie Galotti was close at hand.

2. Kaestner's Emil und die Detektive : Emil and the Detectives, the first book I read in German, and still one of my favorites. Emil is sent to visit his grandma in Berlin, but on the train ride all of his money is stolen and he enlists a gang of children (led by Gustav mit der Hupe) to help him catch the thief. Interesting filmings also.

3. Goethe's Faust : Who wrote Faust? The opera? the play? the epic poem? the ballet? It's not a joke - I read Goethe's Faust in 12th grade. I read an ancient English translation from my parents shelves that had good illustrations as I remember. I was particularly taken with Mephisto at the time - still my favorite character in the series. And now I've even eaten at Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig just like he and Faust!

4. Selected Kafka short stories: First thing we read in my first college German class. Intense, yet very satisfying. I highly recommend "The Country Doctor" - that story could sum up my entire roommate experience.

5. Strauss/Hofmannsthal's Der Rosenkavalier : Sublime music, subtle text - what more could you want in an opera? Hofmannsthal had an interesting relationship to religion, particularly Catholicism, and hinted at eternal marriage in his writing. It makes the love duets more poignant, even if one could make the crass comparison to a prominent Mormon musical.

6. Heinrich Boell's Short Stories : The war and reconstruction from the German point of view. Very interesting and refreshing.

7. Buechner's Woycek : It's a disturbing play - and then you realize that it was written long before disturbing plays were supposed to have been written. Woycek is a part of a military medical experiment in which he only eats peas - which I immediately took note of at my first reading since I had eaten peas for dinner a number of days in a row. Didn't help that I had already just read Kleist's Das Erdbeben in Chili which ends with cracking babies' heads open against the wall of the cathedral.

8. Any film by Werner Herzog : Aguirre, Fata Morgana, Woycek, Nosferatu, they're all brilliant. I would be amiss not at attribute that in part to Klaus Kinski, but even the non-Kinski ones are great. Terrific use of music particularly in the murder scene in Woycek and the mountain scenes in Nosferatu.

9. Brecht's Three-penny Opera : I must have been incredibly desensitized when I was in this play, because somehow it didn't faze me at all that I was cast as a prostitute and as an angry beggar. Two Brecht classes later I had been fazed by Brecht (I don't suggest Baal unless you really, really have to) but I thought this one was a big romp in the park. That could have something to do with performing a Marxist play in the business building when the power had gone off and driving cars onto the sidewalk to use the headlights to light an impromptu stage when the sun went down. Maybe also because I'd already read Die Marquise von O and its famous dash.

10. Weimar Film : I liked old movies and I liked the prof who taught it, so it was a match made in heaven. I'm doing them a disservice grouping them all together, since it could be its own post. If there was only one film you watched from this period, I would recommend M and if you have time for a second, then The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Those two pretty well sum up the time period, if they aren't in fact the same story.

11. Paul Celan's Poetry: My favorite Holocaust writer, even if you need an encyclopedia to understand him. It was also my first time really studying the impossibility of language to convey meaning and it was fascinating.

12. Borchert's Draussen vor der Tuer : Somehow I missed this one as an undergrad even though it's usually something they make you read at the intermediate level. Still, it's a brilliant little radio play, complete with an anthropomorphic Elbe that "scheisses" on the main character's suicide.

13. Kleist's Das Kaetchen von Heilbronn : I went to a production of this in Berlin without knowing much about it, but I absolutely loved the play and the production. Very Mormon-culture, with questions about religion and marriage, predestination and the lot.

14. Wedekind's Fruehlings Erwachen : Matt and his friends may joke about unlawful congress with a melon, but I've actually seen it on stage! This play explores the theme of teenage sexuality and the associated social mores. Not knowing really anything about the play except that it was famous before I went, I was surprised at its frank (if not a bit dramatic) tale for being from the late 19th century.

15. German art : Ok, early on I fell in love with Viennese Secession art - from Klimt to Schiele - but it wasn't until I was a grad student that I really studied other German artists, and gained a better appreciation for Duerer, Grosz, Dix, Heartfield, and Kollwitz. And it wasn't until my most recent trip that I gained an appreciation for the German romantics, like Schinkel and Friedrich.

Probably this list only makes sense to my sister, but there it is. Some notable things are missing, such as German music and the texts for my thesis. Music deserves its own list, and my thesis's texts are their own list and somewhat obscure. I'm still trying to decide what this might reveal about me. Hmmm.