Harvard Summer Program in Munich, Germany

  Germany

• Munich: 
Munich (Munchen)

Term: Summer 
Dates: Inquire for specific dates.

Description: Located in the heart of Germanys most dramatic landscape and most beautiful city, the Harvard Summer Program in Munich is a six-week intensive course on German language and the culture of Munich.

This coming summer, Munich will mark its 850th birthday with month-long celebrations and festivals, making this a unique opportunity to experience the city in all its splendor and high spirits. Munich was founded in the early Middle Ages, when it played a vital role in the European salt trade and became the home of the Wittelsbach dynasty. The city is best known for its baroque and rococo art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; for nineteenth-century kings such as Ludwig I, who built one of the world's great museums (and crazy Ludwig II with his fairy-tale castles); for its efflorescence as the German center of literature and art around 1900, when writers such as Thomas Mann and artists such as Wassily Kandinsky were all the rage; for the darkest chapter in its history, when it was the willing capital of the Nazi movement; for its rise from the ruins of World War II, and the morally bankrupt ideology to which it had succumbed, to become Germany's poster-child city, the "Metropolis with a Heart"; for the 1972 Olympic Games with their inspiring structures and dispiriting terrorist attack; and for its role as a driving force in contemporary German life and in the worlds third largest economy.

Students encounter the cultural and political history of Munich at every turn: from the English Garden, larger than New Yorks Central Park, to grand avenues with their classical facades, imposing arches, and elegant arcades; from baroque and neobaroque architectural monuments to the monuments of Hitlers rise to power; from medieval city gates, lively city streets, and colorful markets to the glass structures of the Olympic Park; from royal palaces, churches, and cloisters to countless theaters and museums.

Despite its cultural and economic importance, Munich manages not to take itself too seriously. With more recreational offerings than any other German city and, among many other things, its legendary beer gardens, where the city whiles away its long summer evenings under canopies of chestnut trees, Munich presents seemingly limitless opportunities for relaxation and entertainment.

Highlights: GERM S-23 Study Abroad in Munich: German Language and Culture
The Harvard Summer Program in Munich is a total immersion, second-year-level German culture and language course. Encounters with Munich and Bavaria are both intellectual and material, occurring both in the classroom and on site as the class traces cultural and political history in readings and follows its traces on foot. Afternoon sessions combine classroom discussion of texts with instructional excursions in and around Munich. These include walking tours of the historical and contemporary core of the city and class visits to art museums, the Munich City Museum, churches, the English Garden, an historical tavern, Nymphenburg Palace, Dachau, and the Olympic Park. Small-group explorations of contemporary German life complete the cultural component of the program, along with four full-day excursions further afield: to Salzburg, to one of crazy Ludwigs castles, to Nuremberg, and to a monastery, famous for its church and the beer its monks brew, overlooking a lake in the magnificent Bavarian countryside. In addition, every weekday morning there is a class devoted to review and expansion of grammar skills, followed by a writing workshop with supervised writing on topics arising from the afternoon classes and activities.

Prerequisites: first-year college German or the equivalene

Cost in US$: $7,000

Experience Required: yes

Prerequisites: first-year college level German or the equivalent

This Program is open to World Wide Participants.

Application Process Involves:

• Written Application

Year Founded: 1871