26 September 2024

Updated content:

Course overview

Old:

Germany has always been at the heart of the European intellectual tradition and is now the driving force of its economy and the EU.

Our modules reflect the range and diversity of Germany’s culture, history and society. Intensive language work opens up the richness of German language and cultural subjects such as film, literature, politics, philosophy and history. This means you will finish your degree as a highly proficient, internationally mobile linguist with a deep understanding of key issues and developments in Germany’s cultural past and present.

Your second or third year is normally spent abroad, either as a language assistant, or working or studying at one of our partner universities (at present including Berlin, Munich, Cologne and Dresden).

Important information

We are planning to make some exciting changes to our German Studies (BA) degree for 2025 entry. We continually review our curricula to reflect developments in the relevant disciplines to deliver the best educational experience. The core and optional modules will undergo approval through the University's rigorous academic processes. As modules are approved, we will update the course information on this webpage. It is therefore very important that you check this webpage for the latest information before you apply and prior to accepting an offer. Sign up to receive updates.

New:

Germany has always been at the heart of the European intellectual tradition and is now the driving force of its economy and the EU.

Our modules reflect the range and diversity of Germany’s culture, history and society. Intensive language work opens up the richness of German language and cultural subjects such as film, literature, politics, philosophy and history. This means you will finish your degree as a highly proficient, internationally mobile linguist with a deep understanding of key issues and developments in Germany’s cultural past and present.

Your second or third year is normally spent abroad, either as a language assistant, or working or studying at one of our partner universities (at present including Berlin, Munich, Cologne and Dresden). This is an invaluable opportunity to immerse yourself in the linguistic and cultural contexts where German is spoken, enhance your language skills and build international connections.

You will have access to outstanding facilities and resources. This includes flexible collaborative and individual learning spaces, as well as a vast selection of print, digital and multimedia learning materials.

You will graduate as a highly qualified linguist, with advanced intercultural skills and a sophisticated understanding of key concepts and debates in German-speaking cultures. The specialist communication, research, critical and evaluative skills you will gain are all highly sought after by employers.

The German Studies degree is compatible with Warwick Business School’s Gateway to Business Programme.

Core modules

Old:

In your first year, you will take language classes designed to develop your knowledge and understanding of written and spoken German. To complement this, you will follow cultural modules that focus on contemporary German culture and society and explore the origins of modern German culture in the late eighteenth century. This programme provides an excellent foundation for studying further aspects of German literary, visual and political culture in the later stages of your degree.

Every year throughout your degree, you will also be able to choose one further module: this may be an interdisciplinary cross-School module, a new language, or a new module from another academic department. In your intermediate and final years, you will go on to further develop your German language skills through language teaching that will challenge you to understand and demonstrate more complex structures, moving between different types of linguistic encounter.

In addition to cultural modules on nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century German culture, you will have an opportunity to develop your own interests by choosing from a wide selection of modules offered by German specialists that cover a broad range of subjects in German culture, contemporary society, literature, politics, philosophy, film, history and business, as well as translation and transcultural studies. You can also opt to study some of our interdisciplinary cross-School modules.

You can normally choose to spend your year abroad studying at a university in a German speaking country or on a British Council Assistantship or a work placement.

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Important information

We are planning to make some exciting changes to our German Studies (BA) degree for 2025 entry. We continually review our curricula to reflect developments in the relevant disciplines to deliver the best educational experience. The core and optional modules will undergo approval through the University's rigorous academic processes. As modules are approved, we will update the course information on this webpage. It is therefore very important that you check this webpage for the latest information before you apply and prior to accepting an offer. Sign up to receive updates.

Year One

Modern German Language 1

You will develop your translation, grammatical and speaking skills in German, and in doing so broaden your vocabulary and range of idiom, expression and awareness of various stylistic registers. You will work in a pair or group on a media project under the supervision of a tutor, which will contribute to your end-of-year mark in spoken German.

Read more about Modern German Language 1Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2023/24 year of study).

Provincial - Pariah - Powerhouse: Reading German-language Culture in a Global Perspective

This module introduces landmarks in the history of modern Germany, which emerged as a nation out of a confederation of provinces and principalities in the 19th century. You will touch on the political turmoil, conflicts, and violence that at times made Imperial Germany, the Third Reich and the post-1945 Germanies pariah states in the eyes of the international community. You will also reflect on the developments that led to contemporary Germany's’emergence as a cultural, political and economic powerhouse, shaping global trends in film, literature, theatre and music. The module focuses on the media and representations through which many of us first encounter German-language culture: fairy-tales and their afterlives; performance, visual and screen culture; music and sound. In other words, students will sample the works and ideas that have put Germany and the German language on the world map.

We will engage with a number of key questions. How did German literature, film, art, and music transform the status of the German language? How did German-speaking artists shape the cultural genres that we consume today? How does engaging with these works give us a more differentiated understanding of the positive and negative aspects of Germany's’history and its global influence?

The module will help you develop skills that will be essential for the rest of your degree and your life after Warwick: critical reading; clear and concise argumentation; excellent written and oral communication skills; independent thinking and research.

Read more about Provincial - Pariah - Powerhouse: Reading German-language Culture in a Global Perspective, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2023/24 year of study).

An Independant Research Project and the choice of a selection of optional modules (which may be Translation Studies modules, an approved outside option in another department or a module in the Language Centre).

Intermediate Year

Modern German Language 2

In this second-year module, you will increase your general and specialised vocabulary in German through translation into English and German, essay-writing in German, spoken and listening comprehension, and work on business-related materials. In pursuit of these aims, you will learn to identify and rectify grammatical errors, and gain increased sensitivity towards language in general, and an awareness of register, semantics and style in particular. You will also gain important language research skills, including correct use of dictionaries.

Read more about Modern German Language 2Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2023/24 year of study).

Reason, Romantics and Reactions. Germany in the Age of Revolution

You will get to grips with the emerging sense of German nationhood, against the background of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. You will study concepts such as the state, the nation and the classical ideal as an aesthetic and political model through the work of authors such as Goethe, Schiller and Hölderlin, before exploring German Romanticism up to its critical reappraisal in the 19th century. You will develop your appreciation of the role of the artists in the German Weltanschauung and the rise of nationalism to broaden your understanding of how literature reflects different models of progress and anticipates social and political change.

Read more about Reason, Romantics and Reactions. Germany in the Age of RevolutionLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2022/23 year of study).

Optional modules

Optional modules vary from year to year. Example optional modules include:

• Bertolt Brecht: Theatre as Revolution
• Reason, Romantics and Reactions: Germany in the Age of Revolution
• Film in the Weimar Republic and under National Socialism
• Violent Women in the German Cultural Imagination

Final Year

Modern German Language 3

In this third-year module, you will use vocabulary of increasing sophistication in both general and specialised fields, and improve your skills in spoken and written German and translation. You will improve your listening and reading comprehension skills, and learn to identify and rectify grammatical errors. An important aim of the course is to cultivate sensitivity towards language in general, and an awareness of register, semantics and style.

Read more about the Modern German Language 3 moduleLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2023/24 year of study).

The Rise of Capitalist Modernity: Gender, Class, Identity

You will study the evolution of modern German literature, from Poetic Realism, through Naturalism and Modernism across a wide spectrum of authors, genres and themes in dialogue with major social, cultural and political movements that mark the transformation of Germany and Austria from the 1870s onwards. Themes include the Industrial Revolution, social critique and the dramatic form, sexuality, adolescence and education in the Wilhelmine period, gender roles and modernity, and the lead-up and response of German writers to the First World War. You will analyse major literary movements through the work of, among others, Theodor Fontane, Gerhart Hauptmann, Arthur Schnitzler, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Georg Kaiser, and appreciate how the arts became a vehicle for expressing ambivalent attitudes to modernity.

Read more about The Rise of Capitalist Modernity: Gender, Class, Identity moduleLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2023/24 year of study).

New:

In your first year, you will take language classes designed to develop your knowledge and understanding of written and spoken German. To complement this, you will follow cultural modules that focus on contemporary German culture and society and explore the origins of modern German culture in the late eighteenth century. This programme provides an excellent foundation for studying further aspects of German literary, visual and political culture in the later stages of your degree.

Every year throughout your degree, you will also be able to choose one further module: this may be an interdisciplinary cross-School module, a new language, or a new module from another academic department. In your intermediate and final years, you will go on to further develop your German language skills through language teaching that will challenge you to understand and demonstrate more complex structures, moving between different types of linguistic encounter.

In addition to cultural modules on nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century German culture, you will have an opportunity to develop your own interests by choosing from a wide selection of modules offered by German specialists that cover a broad range of subjects in German culture, contemporary society, literature, politics, philosophy, film, history and business, as well as translation and transcultural studies. You can also opt to study some of our interdisciplinary cross-School modules.

You can normally choose to spend your year abroad studying at a university in a German-speaking country or on a British Council Assistantship or a work placement.

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Year One

Modern German Language 1

You will develop your translation, grammatical and speaking skills in German, and in doing so broaden your vocabulary and range of idiom, expression and awareness of various stylistic registers. You will work in a pair or group on a media project under the supervision of a tutor, which will contribute to your end-of-year mark in spoken German.

Read more about Modern German Language 1Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2024/25 year of study).

Provincial - Pariah - Powerhouse: Reading German-language Culture in a Global Perspective

This module introduces landmarks in the history of modern Germany, which emerged as a nation out of a confederation of provinces and principalities in the 19th century. You will touch on the political turmoil, conflicts, and violence that at times made Imperial Germany, the Third Reich and the post-1945 Germanies pariah states in the eyes of the international community. You will also reflect on the developments that led to contemporary Germany's’emergence as a cultural, political and economic powerhouse, shaping global trends in film, literature, theatre and music. The module focuses on the media and representations through which many of us first encounter German-language culture: fairy-tales and their afterlives; performance, visual and screen culture; music and sound. In other words, students will sample the works and ideas that have put Germany and the German language on the world map.

We will engage with a number of key questions. How did German literature, film, art, and music transform the status of the German language? How did German-speaking artists shape the cultural genres that we consume today? How does engaging with these works give us a more differentiated understanding of the positive and negative aspects of Germany's’history and its global influence?

The module will help you develop skills that will be essential for the rest of your degree and your life after Warwick: critical reading; clear and concise argumentation; excellent written and oral communication skills; independent thinking and research.

Read more about Provincial - Pariah - Powerhouse: Reading German-language Culture in a Global Perspective, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2024/25 year of study).

An Independant Research Project and the choice of a selection of optional modules (which may be Translation Studies modules, an approved outside option in another department or a module in the Language Centre).

Intermediate Year

Modern German Language 2

In this second-year module, you will increase your general and specialised vocabulary in German through translation into English and German, essay-writing in German, spoken and listening comprehension, and work on business-related materials. In pursuit of these aims, you will learn to identify and rectify grammatical errors, and gain increased sensitivity towards language in general, and an awareness of register, semantics and style in particular. You will also gain important language research skills, including correct use of dictionaries.

Read more about Modern German Language 2Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2024/25 year of study).

Optional modules

Optional modules vary from year to year. Example optional modules include:

• Bertolt Brecht: Theatre as Revolution
• Reason, Romantics and Reactions: Germany in the Age of Revolution
• Film in the Weimar Republic and under National Socialism
• Violent Women in the German Cultural Imagination

Final Year