The German Club: "Germania"

Germania



	Peter Verovsek '06, President of Germania, hosts a stop at Jake Wirth's on a trip to see Gegen die Wand at the Harvard Film Archive

Germania,¹ the German club at Dartmouth, hosts a variety of activities, including films, meetings with invited speakers, trips, plays, and social events.

Here is a list of some upcoming Germania events

The Max Kade German Center serves as the usual meeting place, as well as the affinity house for many of the club's members.



	Janna Johnson '06, Prof. Klaus Mladek and Iryna Kholkina '06 enjoy the typical conviviality of a Germania event

History: Founded in 1930 and directed by the legendary Professor Stephan J. Schlossmacher, the Studenten-Verbindung Germania was one of the largest and most active organizations on campus. Its meeting space, a lavishly-furnished room on Robinson Hall's top floor, featured a grand piano, several suits of armor, and regalia suggestive of an old-fashioned German fraternity. The weekly meetings ranged from song-fests and dramatic readings to ambitious concerts. Germania also staged full productions of plays like Kleist's Der zerbrochene Krug, Schiller's Wallenstein, and Ludwig Thoma's Erste Klasse, all in historical costume. In those days of only male students, women from the community played the female roles.

Schlossmacher's retirement in 1960 and various developments in student life reduced the club's scope, and it lost its meeting space in 1970. But it never wholly disappeared, even winning the National German Theater Contest twice in the 1980s.

Lately Germania has undergone a considerable renaissance, winning the "Most Improved Organization" award from the Council on Student Organizations in 2003. In 2007-8 the club sponsored a variety of weekly events, in addition to a regular German table. A partial list: dinners, film showings, an Oktoberfest, poetry readings, a show-and-tell of German dialects, a discussion with German Consul General Wolfgang Vorwerk, and a trip to New York City to see a version of Wedekind's Spring's Awakening on Broadway.

Germania's activities are supported by an endowment that was recently donated by Bert W. Anger '42.



	Prof. Fuechtner with the "Most Improved Organization" Award

¹ Although the name "Germania" might evoke visions of Hitler's and Speer's plans for a grandly rebuilt Berlin, it has a much older and prouder tradition. The name originated sometime after 80 A.D., when the Romans named two of their provinces Germania Inferior and Germania Superior. Tacitus wrote his study "Germania" in 98 A.D. The name has since designated the area settled by the various Germanic tribes, and by extension German cultural tradition. It is also the name of the personification of Germany, the female figure Germania (roughly analogous to Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic). At Dartmouth, too, the name antedates the Third Reich and was intended as a playful reference to the kind of fraternity tradition featured in The Student Prince.
back to text 1