Tag Archives: America

Historical Dreams and Dreaming History – From Virginia to Lüneburg

By Veronika M. Heinrich

When I start­ed study­ing at Leuphana Uni­ver­si­ty Lüneb­urg, I even­tu­al­ly went into the library and couldn’t help notice the quote by Thomas Jef­fer­son on the library stair­case. The words and pos­si­ble mean­ings were res­onat­ing with me. By study­ing here, I imag­ined, I can cre­ate a bet­ter future. No mat­ter how dark the past is, we can make the future brighter.
Now that a few semes­ters have passed, I recent­ly start­ed to ques­tion the quote. By only look­ing into the future, don’t we neglect the past? What kind of quote is this to put in a library, which basi­cal­ly con­sists of works of the past? Is there a deep­er mean­ing to why a quote by Thomas Jef­fer­son was cho­sen? And is it suit­able to put his words on our walls? What else is there to know about Jef­fer­son and his dreams for the future?
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Having Fun with Language on German American Day 2022

By Sabrina Völz

In coun­tries, such as Poland and the Nether­lands, learn­ing Ger­man is on the rise. Yet, in the U.S., it’s been declin­ing for the past hun­dred years. Num­bers of stu­dents learn­ing Ger­man have decreased from rough­ly two mil­lion in 1910 to a lit­tle over one mil­lion today. There­fore, it shouldn’t come as a sur­prise that Ger­man pro­grams have been clos­ing all over the U.S. The very lib­er­al arts col­lege I attend­ed as a bach­e­lor stu­dent in Indi­anola, Iowa – Simp­son Col­lege – elim­i­nat­ed its Ger­man pro­gram a few years ago. So in prepa­ra­tion for this Ger­man Amer­i­can Day (Oct. 6), I decid­ed to attempt to do some PR for German.

Recent­ly, while I was surf­ing the web, I came across some­thing that almost knocked me for a loop. It’s noth­ing bad, just a 58-let­ter word. So let’s hear that drum roll….

Please acti­vate javascript to watch the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ViZqQkddCc

That word is: Kurzfris­ten-energie-ver­sorgungs-sicherungs-maß­nah­men-verord­nung.

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A New Millennium?

By Michael Lederer

“MCU035” by maxxtraf­fic is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Jan­u­ary 1, 2000. Not just a new cen­tu­ry, but a new mil­len­ni­um. Spot­less, for the briefest moment, though far from emp­ty. Arriv­ing so brim­ful of promise and hope. “What will it be like?” we won­dered, star­ing almost child-like at the clock as it approached the new era. A brand-new, unopened, ready-to-use mil­len­ni­um! And this time, with all we’d learned over past mil­len­nia, we would get things right.

Knock on wood.

 

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