NEW COURSE - SPRING 2007

Course: German 804 (Interdisciplinary Western European Area Studies Seminar. Crosslisted with History, Political Science, Sociology, and French)
Instructors: Klaus L. Berghahn (German and Jewish Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison ) and Eric Weitz (History, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities)
Title: War, Peace and the Birth of a United Europe, 1648-2003
Meets: Wednesdays, 3:30-5:30 p.m.
Credits: 3

In Kant's treatise On Perpetual Peace (1795) one finds the surprising statement that "Nature has chosen war as a means of obtaining peace."This dialectic of war and peace seems like a Mephistophelian principle of history that promotes war and accomplishes peace. We will use this paradox as the theses for our seminar discussions in order to find out how wars in Europe since the 17th century contributed to the development of peace and a United Europe. Especially since the Enlightenment, the hope for a peaceful Europe has been articulated in many texts up to the present which all have a utopian tinge: Saint Pierre , Rousseau, Bentham, Kant, Fr. Schlegel, Fichte, Berta von Suttner, Nobel, Einstein, Freud, Russell and many others. It is this cluster of philosophical, political, and poetic texts, which will be enhanced by secondary analyses of their theoretical grounding, that interest us. The seminar is designed for graduate students in history, political science, and literature.