Among the Department of German Studies’ greatest privileges is the opportunity to invite a distinguished scholar in our field to teach and learn with us for a quarter each year. Generously funded by the Max Kade Foundation, the Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor is embedded in the Department of German Studies, teaching a course of their choosing, offering a public lecture, and working intensively with graduate students and faculty.
Prof. Ansgar Mohnkern, Professor of German at the University of Amsterdam, presented the ideal case for a Kade Lecturer. He is an advanced scholar with many books to his credit, and who cultivates a methodology as broad and rigorous as German Studies itself. Ansgar works on topics as diverse as Goethe, algorithms, and soccer fandom, and has recently completed a book that treats his experience of the decline and death of his parents with curious, intellectually grounded sincerity. Moreover, he visibly enjoyed the Great Northwest and being in community here at the UW!
“It was a wonderful stay here in Seattle,” says Ansgar, “a stay during times of a very particular type of Ungleichzeitigkeit [non-simultaneity]. With the world (speaking with Shakespeare/Lukács) ‘aus den Fugen geraten’ [running off the rails], the American sublime (the Cascades, Olympic Peninsula, the ocean, the whales) was a source of great comfort and joy, also for my family and children.”
His stay was marked by a particular generosity: Ansgar conducted a class for advanced undergraduates that dealt with extremely pressing questions of algorithms and storytelling. “Students in class were wonderful,” he says, “and dedicated to getting to terms with the question of how to be human in times of (not only) technological madness.”
Ansgar also delivered a popular lecture, entitled "The Cult of Tradition: German Soccer and the Rise of the New Right," which was included in the UW's Series on soccer ahead of this year's World Cup. He even participated in a podcast with the series organizers!
What’s more, he also convened special sessions for our graduate students, providing valuable feedback on their research and sharing his own. He will be missed! As Ansgar departs, let us allow him the last word: “At last, the many lovely colleagues and grad students, the exchange, the warmth and the intellectual vibrancy at the German Department: I am thankful to having being part of all this.”
(written by Martin Schwartz)