Academic Departments and Programs

German Studies

The modern German language was born in the 16th century when two groups of dialects merged into a single language. As a result of the wide circulation of Martin Luther's German translation of the Bible (1534), the new language quickly grew in influence and prestige.

German was the mother tongue of many brilliant writers such as Goethe, Schiller, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, and Ingeborg Bachmann and many well-known composers such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner. From the 18th century onwards, German has been at the forefront of intellectual inquiry, with philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger, political thinkers such as Marx, Engels, Nietzsche and Hannah Arendt, psychoanalysts such as Freud and Jung and linguists such as Humboldt, Schlegel, and Grimm. Films by German directors such as Fritz Lang, R.W. Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta and Werner Herzog are part of international cinematic literature.

German is key to understanding the complexities of 20th century European history, culture and identity, given Germany's role in World Wars I and II, the Holocaust, the Cold War, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the evolution of the European Union (EU) following the reunification of East and West Germany. Now spoken by over 100 million people in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, German has more native speakers than any other European language and is second only to English as the language of business within the European Union.

Here in Canada, German occupies an important place in Manitoba's linguistic and cultural mosaic due to multiple migrations of German-speakers from around the world. Not surprisingly, the University of Winnipeg boasts a Chair in German-Canadian Studies and a Chair in Mennonite Studies, established to promote the study of the history and culture of German-speaking immigrants.