The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies, co-sponsored by the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies and the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, is proud to present Andreas Schnitzler, “Reconsidering Austria’s Past.”

Andreas Schnitzer is currently serving as Holocaust Memorial Intern at the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre in Toronto. His internship is part of the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service, which offers an independent alternative to Austria’s compulsory military service. In his interactive presentation, Schnitzer will discuss current memory discourses in Austria, as well as issues of xenophobia, immigration and anti-Semitism. Finally, he will provide students with information about opportunities to participate in a field trip to Vienna.

When?: March 11, 2013, at 2:30-4:30pm
Where?: York Research Tower, 749 York University

The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies is pleased to present the film screening of Etwas Besseres als den Tod (2011) (English translation: “Beats Being Dead“), directed by Christian Petzold, at the Nat Taylor Cinema on Saturday, February 23rd, 3:00pm.

Dreileben is a trilogy to which German directors Christian Petzold, Dominik Graf, and Christoph Hochhäusler each contributed one movie. Presented for the first time at the 2011 Berlinale, the three movies function as a collective as they are connected through time, place, characters, and events: in order to say goodbye to his foster mother, convicted sexual criminal Molesch finds himself in a hospital in a forest in Thüringen; unobserved for a minute, he manages to break away. His escape and the city of Dreileben’s hunt after him is the core of the trilogy. However, each movie offers another perspective and narrative.

Petzold’s movie Etwas Besseres Als den Tod (2011) is the first part of the trilogy, dealing with the romance between civilian servant Johannes and Bosnian maid Ana. Abandoning Ana, Johannes falls in love with Sarah, and the two of them pursue their studies in Berlin. Meanwhile, Ana encounters Molesch on his escape.

Christian Petzold was born in Hilden, Germany. He studied at the Free University of Berlin before graduating from the German Film and Television Academy. His feature films are The State I Am In (2000), Wolfsburg (2002), Ghosts (2004), Yella (2006), Jerichow (2008), Dreileben: Beats Being Dead (2011) and Barbara (2012). He has received several renowned film awards, and is a leading artist in contemporary German‐language cinema.

Gustav Klimt was one of the central figures of fin-de-siècle Vienna, the epoch that marked the beginning of Modernism. Creator of some of the most famous Art Nouveau paintings worldwide, Klimt was also one of the organizers of the “Jugendstil” art movement in Vienna.

To commemorate the official “Gustav Klimt Year” in Austria and his 150th birthday, the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies is pleased to present an exhibit of his life and work. This exhibition, generously provided to us by the Austrian Cultural Forum, focuses on the artist by recreating the atmosphere of his era through historical photographs, biographical documentations and reproductions of his finest and most famous works of art.

The exhibit will be on display on the 1^st Floor of York’s Scott Library until January 30.

The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies is pleased to offer funding to individual York Graduate Students pursuing studies in the area of German and European Studies. This support takes the form of a variety of awards, prizes, scholarships and bursaries which have been made possible thanks to the generosity of the Centre’s corporate supporters and individual donors.

Please view the Funding and Opportunities page for further information on these opportunities.

The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies is pleased to present two lectures by Thomas Buerk (Critical Geography Berlin and HU Berlin), as a part of the CCGES-DAAD Visiting Lecture Series.

Lecture One: “Help, the Tourists are Coming!”: the symbolic struggle for and against tourists and tourism in Berlin/Germany

Date: Tuesday, November 27th
Time: 10:00am-TBD
Location: Curtis Lecture Hall, H

Lecture Two: ‘Urban Cultures against Right-Wing Activism: Challenging the spatial hegemony of racism in East-German small towns
This lecture is also co-sponsored by the CITY Institute at York University. 

Date: Friday, November 30th
Time: 12:30pm-TBD
Location: York Research Tower, Room 749

(please click here for Interactive YorkU map, to each lecture location) 

Thomas Buerk holds a PhD in European Anthropology from Humboldt University Berlin, where he also currently teaches as a sessional lecturer. He has worked on the spatial conflicts around right-wing extremism in Brandenburg, on tourism and gentrification in Berlin and Spain, and has been involved in North-South activism and other social movements since the 1980s. Recent publications include articles on the production of “spaces of fear” in Germany, the symbolic politics of right-wing manifestations at World War II Memorial sites as well as critical contributions to the debates about “distinctiveness” and an “intrinsic logic” of cities.

The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies was pleased to present our guest, Dr. John Kannankulam (Marburg) and his lecture, “Conjunctures of the Euro crisis and Germany’s role from a critical IPE-Perspective”.

John Kannankulam (PhD Frankfurt) teaches political science with a focus on the political economy of European integration in Marburg. He has worked on Marxist state theories, particularly Poulantzas, and is currently involved in a project on the EU as a state-project, looking at migration policies in Spain, the UK and Germany. His visit at York is supported by funding from DAAD.

Date: Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
Time: 3:00pm-TBD
Location: Stedman Lecture Hall, C
(please click on link and type in “Stedman” to search for directions to this lecture)

Together with the CITY Institute at York, the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies hosted a talk by Dietmar Schirmer (DAAD visiting professor at the University of Florida Department of Political Science), focusing on the topics of Berlin and London. This talk took place on Friday, November 9th from 12:30 to 2:30 pm in room 280A York Lanes. (click here for a link to an interactive York University Map of the Keele Campus, and here for a York Lanes’ link)

Dietmar Schirmer, Ph.D. in Political Science from Free University Berlin, 1990, is a DAAD visiting professor at the University of Florida Department of Political Science. He has taught at Free University Berlin, University of Vienna (2004), at Cornell (1998-2003), and the University of British Columbia. Dietmar Schirmer was a Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., from 1992-1995.

His research interests include: Comparative Politics and Historical Sociology, regional specialization in Europe. Current research agenda in state-formation, nationalism, and European integration and in the aesthetics of the state. Some of his more recent publications are:

• The Beautiful State: Architecture and Political Authority in Europe Since the Renaissance (under review at Cornell University Press)
• “State, Volk, and Monumental Architecture in Nazi-Era Berlin,” in: Andreas Daum and Christoph Mauch, eds.
• Berlin – Washington, 1800 – 2000: Capital Cities, Cultural Representation, and National Identities, Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 127-153
• “Closing the Nation: Nationalism and Statism in 19th and 20th Century Germany,” in: Sima Godfrey and Frank Unger, eds.
• The Shifting Foundations of Modern Nation States, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004, 35-58
• Identity and Intolerance: Nationalism, Racism, and Xenophobia in Germany and the United States, Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press 1998 and 2002 (ed. with Norbert Finzsch)

Date: Friday November 9, 2012
Time: 12:30-2:30 pm
Location: Room 280A, York lanes, York University