Dear friends of the German Department,

Just a few weeks ago, the Ingalls Mall outside of the MLB was still teeming with black-robed, mortarboard-bedecked graduates sporting colorful tassels—and now those graduates have all left campus and the lighter rhythms of spring/summer have begun to settle in (even though the weather seems to be lagging). We have taken leave of another impressive graduating class of majors and minors, who are off to great things in the world beyond Michigan; perhaps some of you will discover yourselves in the graduation photos we include in this issue. And continuing students have left, or are about to embark, for language study and internships abroad, which we are once again able to support financially from our endowments thanks to the continued generosity of our donors. Faculty and graduate students, meanwhile, have now turned their attention back full-time to research and writing on topics ranging from translation to collecting, from media to museums, from “forms of life” to histories of waiting, and from black musicians in Germany to Jewish life in central Europe.

It’s been quite a year, once again: full of exciting classes, fascinating lectures, visits, and events—many of which you can read about in the pages that follow: workshops on Neue Sachlichkeit and transnational German Studies, classes on a plethora of eye- (and ear-) opening subjects; two colleagues even brightened the cinderblock hallways of the MLB by curating a display that showcased intricate glass models of marine invertebrates, manufactured by a father and son in Dresden in the 19th century!

As we head into summer we’re already making plans for the coming year, and we look forward to updating you on our line-up of events, visits, and speakers on the web, Facebook, and Twitter.

As ever, please stay in touch. Much as we love sharing what we do, we also enjoy immensely when we hear from you, find out where your “Abenteuer mit Deutsch”, your explorations of Dutch language and culture, or your Scandinavian studies have taken you. And most of all, we enjoy the opportunity to reconnect and say hi when you pass through Ann Arbor: come visit!

Mit herzlichen Grüßen,

Johannes von Moltke

moltke@umich.edu