WCGS: Jakob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Lecture 2010

[Mat Schulze]

On Thursday, 18 November 2010 at 5 pm in DC 1302, the Waterloo Centre for German Studies will have its first Jakob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm Lecture, the speaker will be the Germanist historian David Blackbourn of Harvard University. The title of his talk is Nature and Environment in Modern Germany; A Difficult History. David Blackbourn will talk in broad terms about how Germans have changed their environment since the eighteenth century, and the problems that face historians who write about this process. The lecture and discussion will be followed by a reception. If you are planning to attend please take a brief moment to register at http://www.wcgs.ca/www/index.php/programming/events/133-grimm10.html, where you also find a poster for the event.

Why call it the Jakob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm Lecture?
Everybody in the Anglophone and German-speaking world knows the brothers Grimm, don't they? And, of course, name recognition can only be a good thing for a lecture. But that is not all. I am sure you know that Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm are among the fathers of German Studies as a discipline (poor Germanistik does not seem to have a mother, just a bunch of fathers ;-)). The Grimms are, of course, best known as the collectors and editors of German folk tales. They defined Germanistik, however, as the study of the German language, history, literature, and law. And both have clearly shown that they meant it by publishing a Deutsche Grammatik in 1819, parts of the Deutsches Wörterbuch in 1838 and subsequent years as well as books and essays on German mythology and the history of German law in addition to the collection and editing of literary texts and their books on the history of German literature. The best known German dictionary, the collection of fairy tales and the Germanic sound shift are all named after them: Grimms Wörterbuch, Grimms Märchen, Grimms Gesetz. Even when they made a mistake, it stuck with us. The term Rückumlaut, which they coined, is still with us today to describe the conjugation of mixed verbs like brennen and denken. In a word, they are the best know German Studies scholars to this very day, but they also had interests and achievements outside of Germanophony: Jakob, for example, studied Slavic languages and wrote essays about the Sorbian language, they collected Irish fairy tales and translated and published them. It would be very hard to find two scholars who represent the various research and teaching interests of WCGS any better than Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm.

Why have the lecture on 18 November?
The Grimms were two of the Göttingen Seven, a group of seven professors who protested publicly against the king's abolition of the constitution of the kingdom of Hanover. Their defence of public liberties against a monarch resulted in their dismissal from university. Students copied the protest note and made it known all over Germany, so in spite of the fact that the Göttingen Seven's protest had very little impact directly, it's long-term effects are immense. Liberalism and constitutionalism in German politics to this day trace back their roots to this widely publicized protest. When did all this happen? The Göttingen Seven handed in their protest note on 18 November 1837 - 173 years to the day of the first Jakob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm Lecture.

Why ask David Blackbourn to speak?
David is Coolidge Professor of  History at Harvard University, worked at the University of London before and has a PhD from Cambridge. His extensive publications are the reason why he is one of the best-known Germanist historians in the world today. In fact, his publication list is so long, it had to be split into different sections on his website: http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/blackbourn.php. I asked him to speak on his latest monograph The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany in the hope that an important topic such as water, presented by such a distinguished speaker, will be of interest not only to people in the community and colleagues and students in German Studies, but also to our colleagues in the sciences, environment, economics, political science, sociology ... In other words, I believe a Germanist like David Blackbourn will be able to show that research in German Studies can make a valuable contribution to our own field, but also to discourses in disciplines taught and researched in other corners of the campus. If you need persuading that water is an important and fascinating topic, please have a look at the website http://water.uwaterloo.ca, where they also use the Kennedy quote: "Anybody who can solve the problems of water will be worthy of two Nobel prizes - one for peace and one for science." to make this point.

Best wishes
Mat

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mat Schulze, PhD
Associate Professor of German and 
Director of the Waterloo Centre for German Studies
University of Waterloo
www.wcgs.ca/~mschulze





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