Teaching a Multidisciplinary Course on the Holocaust and German Culture

Abstract

The absence of any direct study of the Holocaust—or, indeed, of the Nazi period—in most traditional U.S. university and college German department curricula begs the question of the relationship of German culture (as opposed to politics or economics) to those events. A course at Swarthmore College that juxtaposes the key forms of German culture, particularly Romanticism, with the phenomenon of the Holocaust raises that fundamental question in recurring forms, namely: Could the Holocaust have happened anywhere else, and is there something peculiar to German culture that resulted in the Holocaust? This article outlines the structure of the course that addresses these questions and concludes that pre-World War II German cultural forces—those that encouraged a culture that looked inward, sought abstract ideals, and longed to merge with an over-arching whole—may possibly have contributed to the ensuing dehumanizing, genocidal racial policy.