"I found my smattering of German very useful here; indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get on without it."
-Jonathan Harker on his way to Transylvania in Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1897

Within a liberal arts setting, the importance of German is indisputable. German-speakers occupy a prominent place on any list of the world's greatest artists and thinkers, while almost every academic discipline has a strong German tradition, in many cases one that largely defines the field. In fact, the modern university itself, with its combination of teaching and research, is a German invention. Dartmouth's library holdings reflect this tradition: after English, more of them are in German than in any other language.

German contributions to the sciences are the easiest to document. In The Discoveries (Pantheon, 2005), Alan Lightman's list of the 22 greatest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century includes eight that were made exclusively by Germans, while two more had Austrian or German collaborators. Nobel Prize awards give another kind of indication. Scientists from the three major German-speaking countries have won 23 Nobel Prizes in Physics (most recently in 2007), 28 in Chemistry (also in 2007), 26 in Medicine (2008), and one in Economics. Seven Germans and Austrians have also received the Peace Prize. Many Nobel laureates from other countries received their training at German universities, which enroll the third-highest number of international students in the world - after the U.S. and Great Britain.

German-speakers are equally prominent in the arts. 12 German, Austrian, or Swiss-German writers have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the most recent being Herta Müller in 2009, Elfriede Jelinek in 2004, and Günter Grass in 1999. Germany and Austria have long been famous for their great art, literature, and music,¹ and they have again become centers for the visual arts, including film. According to the magazine Capital, the two living artists whose works are most sought after by the world's museums and collectors are Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, followed in fourth place by Rosemarie Trockel and in seventh by Georg Baselitz. Between 2002 and 2009, Nirgendwo in Afrika ("Nowhere in Africa"), Das Leben der anderen ("The Lives of Others"), and Die Fälscher ("The Counterfeiters") won Academy Awards as the best foreign pictures, while Sophie Scholl, Untergang ("Downfall"), Revanche, and The Baader Meinhof Complex were also nominated. In 2005, Newsweek called Gegen die Wand ("Head On") the best film of the year. The magazine's same issue claimed that Germany was the best of all countries in which to be a creative artist.

While these academic and artistic perspectives hold the most relevance for liberal arts studies, practical considerations are also unavoidable, and many students choose a foreign language with an eye to their professional futures. Here, too, the study of German offers some real advantages (see also "Majoring or Minoring in German").

German is spoken in four countries with diverse cultural, political, and economic traditions: The Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It is also the mother tongue of significant minorities in neighboring countries, as well as one of Luxembourg's official administrative languages. Among Europeans, in fact, the approximately 101 million native speakers of German greatly outnumber those of English, French, Italian (58-60 million each), or Spanish (36 million). It is also worth noting the Germanophone tradition in literature and film that Turks, Russians, and other minorities are developing in the German-speaking countries. As a language used in business, diplomacy, and tourism, German stands second only to English in Western Europe, and in Eastern Europe it holds first place.² At the same time, according to international surveys by the BBC in 2008 and 2009 (and a similar survey by the Pew Global Outreach Project in 2005), Germany enjoys the most favorable image of any nation in the world, followed by Great Britain, Canada, Japan, the EU, and France. And in its annual consideration of key quality-of-life issues for international executives in 215 cities around the world, Mercer Human Resource Consulting again in 2008 determined that six of the world's nine most livable are Zurich (#1), Vienna (3), Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich, and Bern (6-9). Berlin (16), Nuremberg (23), and Hamburg (24) also rank high (well above Paris [33], London [39], Barcelona [41], Madrid [42], and New York [48]).

The German-speaking countries' economic significance is even greater. Germany boasts the world's fourth-largest national economy and is futhermore the most influential member of the European Union, the world's second-largest economic entity. While clearly affected by the current downturn, it is still relatively well situated. When Newsweek's first issue of 2009 placed Chancellor Angela Merkel eighth on its list of the world's 50 most powerful people (and the top woman), it pointed out that she "has resources few of her peers can match in this crisis. Germany's slow-and-steady economy may have seemed boring in the global boom years, but now Merkel's country looks like a rare island of stability. Government budgets are balanced. There's no housing or credit bubble, and the savings rate puts America to shame (11 percent versus near zero last year)."

The economies of German-speaking Switzerland and Austria are also substantial for their size, and their per capita GDPs rank third and fourth in the EU. Especially Austria has benefited from the opening up of Eastern Europe.

Size is not the only source of Germany's economic importance, however. The Federal Republic, which had a budget surplus in 2007, boasts the highest worker productivity in Europe, and Ernst & Young's annual surveys of international business executives from 2004-6 have each year rated it the world's third-most attractive economic location, behind only the U.S. and China. The World Economic Forum's 2007-8 report placed Germany second on its "Business Competitve Index," while its Global Competitiveness Report ranked Switzerland #2 in the world and Germany #7 (The U.S. was #1; numbers 3-6 were Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, and Finland. Austria was #17, just behind the U.K. and South Korea and ahead of Norway and France).

German inventiveness is also legendary. Perhaps printing with movable type is the greatest German invention, but here are a few others:³

This kind of creativity continues. In 2005, for example, Germany successfully registered 23,800 new patents, more than any other country except the U.S. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, four of the world's ten most innovative companies are German.

In addition to its exports, Germany invests heavily around the world. In 2001, Volkswagen plants in China supplied over half of all the automobiles sold there, and Audi has just opened a major manufacturing facility in India. Similarly significant investments can be found in many other parts of Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, and the Americas. The more than 700 German companies with operations in Mexico, for example, account for 5% of that country's gross domestic product. This world-wide activity is reciprocal: in 2000, other nations invested $262 billion in Germany.

Despite its global reach, Germany maintains an especially strong economic relationship with the United States. This association is partly defined by trade: in 2003 the exchange of goods and services between the two countries reached $96.8 billion. "More than 3,000 German subsidiaries and their branches are operating successfully in the US, where German companies have created some 780,000 jobs.... The top 50 German companies in the US have created 500,000 jobs with a total annual turnover of $270 billion. Germany, meanwhile, is the location in Europe with the strongest concentration of American investors, accounting for some 130 billion euros in investment and 800,000 related jobs."⁵

Mid-size businesses traditionally form the backbone of the German economy, but of the world's 50 largest companies, nine are German: BASF, BMW, Daimler, Deutsche Post, Deutsche Telekom, E.ON, Metro, Siemens, and Volkswagen. HochTief is the world's leading international construction firm, and the Deutsche Bank one of its biggest financial institutions. In terms of money spent on research and development, Daimler and Siemens rank third and fourth in the world, while Volkswagen, Bayer, Hoechst, Bosch, BASF, Boehringer/Ingelheim, Deutsche Telekom, and Mannesman also occupy places among the first 90 (International Herald-Tribune, 26 Feb. 2000).

Germany's automobile, engineering, chemical, pharmaceutical, and high-end appliance firms are well known, as is its leadership in design, but the country's information enterprises are also significant. Bertelsmann is the world's largest publisher, and the German book-publishing industry as a whole ranks third in the world (behind England and China), traditionally producing over a third more new titles each year than does the United States (see The Bowker Annual). Germany is also among the leaders in computing. SAP is the world's largest business software company and the world's third-largest independent software provider. A 1999 study by McKinsey found that the Munich area's 1,800 computer firms, with over 100,000 employees, formed the world's fourth largest concentration of hardware and software producers (after Silicon Valley, Boston, and London). Munich is also home to 115 biotech companies, while Dresden hosts 765 semiconductor firms. On the internet, German is the second language, both in terms of webpages and of languages used in search engines (see http://www.daad.de/deutschland/en/2.5.1.html). According to a 2003 study by the European Interactive Advertising Association, a higher percentage of Germans went online every day than any other Europeans, and Germany had the highest number of websites per capita. In fact, Germany's '.de' is the world's most widely-used country-specific domain, and only '.com' accounts for a larger number of web addresses in any category.⁶

Germany is also the world's leader in the development of alternative energy. Approximately half of all photovoltaic cells and a third of all windmills are produced in Germany, while a single firm, Voith in Heidesheim, provides a third of the world's hydroelectric installations. Renewable energy accounts for 14.2% of Germany's electricity and 6.6% of its heating. In the 2008 Yale-Columbia Environmental Performance Index. Switzerland, Austria, and Germany were ranked among the top 13 countries - with Switzerland in first place. By March 2009 Germany had already met its 2012 Kyoto Treaty obligations for reduced greenhouse gas emissions, three years ahead of time.

Even in the world of sport, German-speakers figure prominently. In the 2008 Summer Olympics, Germany had the fifth-highest total of gold medals and was sixth overall. When the 2007 women's national soccer team successfuly defended the World Cup title it had won in 2003, Germany remained the only country whose men and women have both held the championship. The men's team has won the World Cup and the European Cup each three times, and has reached the finals in each tournament more often than that of any other country. And things look bright for the future: in 2008-9, the German U-21, U-19, and U-17 teams each won the European Championship. Tennis, swimming, rowing, golf, track, basketball, boxing, riding, handball, field hockey, ice hockey, ice-skating, fencing, and auto racing are just some of the other major sports at which Germans excel. German-speaking Switzerland has also produced some of the world's top tennis players, including Martina Hingis and Roger Federer. In 2006, as in the previous two Winter Olympics, Germany was the top medal winner. Austria was 4th (although tied with the 2nd-place U.S. and ahead of 3rd-place Canada in the number of gold medals). Athletes from all the German-speaking countries traditionally dominate alpine skiing to the extent that German is the sport's primary language. Each summer the U.S. Ski Team sends its members to Dartmouth's ALPS Program to learn German.

Thus it becomes clear that a knowledge of German grants access not only to rich literary, philosophical, and artistic traditions but also to many other kinds of contemporary cultural, economic, political, and scientific developments.

The Dartmouth Department of German Studies consequently offers a curriculum that appeals to a wide range of interests. Dartmouth German majors have pursued careers in business, engineering, finance, law, journalism, government service, medicine, and the sciences, as well as in art, literature, philosophy, music, and film. Even non-majors have discovered that their knowledge of German complements such fields as architecture, economics, government, history, engineering, and computer science (see "Majoring or Minoring in German"). Over 150 Dartmouth alumni live and work in the German-speaking countries. But no matter what their future careers, students find that German Studies, as part of a liberal education, can enrich their professional and personal lives.