UC Berkeley’s German Cabaret 2020 Zoomeist heiter bis wolkig UC Berkeley’s students of German once again present a mixture of poetry, skits, and music in their annual cabaret program  – a humorous, poetic, and playful celebration of the German language featuring the suspenseful story of an exquisite overcoat, a poem lamenting the abuse of flowers and blossoms, a Berkeley take on a commercial by the Berlin Public Transit Authority, some really, really bad jokes, and much more – all of this conveniently coming to your house via Zoom and in German, “live” on April 30, 4 pm, and on demand thereafter. If you are joining us ‘live’, please…

In 2011, a right-wing terrorist cell named “NSU” was discovered in Germany. The NSU –”National Socialist Underground” – killed ten people and committed several other crimes. For more than 13 years, three neo-Nazi terrorists had been able to live undetected acting under false identity. All these years the police and intelligence forces did not stop them. Germany’s Chief Federal Prosecutor has called this “Germany’s 9/11”. This may be seen as an exaggeration, nevertheless this judgement shows the importance of the NSU case. Tanjev Schultz puts it into a broader context of developments of the far right, including German Ku Klux…

The Global Urban Humanities Initiative presents Natura Urbana: The Brachen of Berlin, which focuses on the urban wilds of marginal spaces in Berlin as they are transformed into parks and public spaces–or allowed to remain vacant. The film is by Matthew Gandy, the noted geographer from the University of Cambridge and author of The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity and the Urban Imagination among many other books. Co-author and executive producer of the film Sandra Jasper (now at Humboldt University in Berlin) will talk about the film.   Natura Urbana tells the post-war history of Berlin through its plants. The…

Laocoon & Sons: The Story of the Transformation of Esmeralda del Rio (Laokoon & Söhne: Die Verwandlungsgeschichte der Esmeralda del Rio)   Ulrike Ottinger   FEATURING: Tabea Blumenschein,   Ottinger’s debut film already contains many of the elements that would appear in her later works: an extraordinary woman, an unusual country, and a chain of magic transformations that give rise to eccentric characterizations by an ensemble cast, here featuring Tabea Blumenschein in multiple roles. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Ottinger’s allegorical work explores themes of death, destruction, and resurrection. With striking camerawork reminiscent of the antics of avant-garde psychodramas, Laocoon & Sons is…

Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia Ulrike Ottinger FEATURING: Delphine Seyrig, Irm Hermann, Peter Kern, Gillian Scalici,   “A rare and remarkable film. . . . Sumptuously stylized yet ardently observational” (Richard Brody, New Yorker). A central work in Ulrike Ottinger’s career, Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia is an epic adventure tracing a fantastic encounter between two different worlds. Seven Western women travelers meet aboard the sumptuous, meticulously reconstructed Trans-Siberian Express, a rolling museum of European culture. On board are Lady Windermere (Delphine Seyrig in her last screen role), a prim tourist (Irm Hermann), a brash Broadway chanteuse, and an all-girl klezmer trio. Ambushed by a…

The Eurozone, Ukraine, refugees and Brexit – the European Union has had to confront and manage several major crises during the last decade. However, the outcomes of these crises in respect of political integration have been divergent. The Eurozone has become politically more closely integrated. The Ukraine crisis has not produced any significant effect one way or the other. In contrast, the refugee crisis has provoked some, albeit limited, political disintegration and, with Brexit, the EU is losing one of its three largest and most powerful member states. This divergent pattern of crisis outcomes is not easily explicable in terms…

The Eurozone, Ukraine, refugees and Brexit – the European Union has had to confront and manage several major crises during the last decade. However, the outcomes of these crises in respect of political integration have been divergent. The Eurozone has become politically more closely integrated. The Ukraine crisis has not produced any significant effect one way or the other. In contrast, the refugee crisis has provoked some, albeit limited, political disintegration and, with Brexit, the EU is losing one of its three largest and most powerful member states. This divergent pattern of crisis outcomes is not easily explicable in terms…

In a nameless town. At an unknown time. A community is on edge as arsonists wreak havoc in the night, going door to door, setting homes ablaze. When the self-assured businessman Biedermann finds himself with the arsonists on his doorstep, will he be prepared for their cunning and coercive tactics? As timeless as it is timely, Max Frisch’s cautionary comic parable on greed, apathy, and the power of persuasion has the urgency of a ticking time bomb.   Directed by Patrick Russell. Sponsored by the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies   Performances Thursday, March 12, 2020 — 8 p.m.…

A series of recent controversies has raised many questions about Europe’s treatment of its religious minorities. Why do societies that claim to respect religious freedom and tolerance so routinely discriminate against Muslims, Jews, and others? Udi Greenberg will explore the origins of Europe’s contemporary thinking about religious pluralism to the recent peace between Catholics and Protestants and will show how this development, which unfolded between the rise of Nazism in the 1930s and the era of decolonization in the 1960s, helped shape both the scope and rigid limits of the continent’s religious landscape   Udi Greenberg is an associate professor…

Exile Shanghai (Exil Shanghai)   Ulrike Ottinger Germany, 1997 Digital Restoration   Fascinating and rich with wry humor, Exile Shanghai is an extraordinary cultural odyssey that affectionately conjures up the lost Jewish world of Shanghai. In the dark days of the 1930s, the Chinese metropolis was the last refuge for Europe’s persecuted Jews—a place that did not demand a visa. Those who managed to find refuge there brought with them the social and gastronomic delights of Vienna and Berlin. Ottinger’s four-and-a-half-hour mosaic features interviews with former members of the Shanghai expatriate Jewish community (many of whom relocated to Northern California), and her…