German 5, a course in modern German literature, is the answer to a dilettante's prayer, to the man who would like a little foreign culture as a side dish, but nothing heavy. Like many whole courses divisible at the instructor's pleasure, its unity is sketchy, consisting mainly in a faint flavor of historical and literary continuity cemented by the bond of the German language.
The work consists entirely in reading several short or abridged works of a few of the great writers of the last century, among them Sudermann. Hebbel, and Scheffel, and incidentally the reading is nearly always lively and interesting. The dramatic poem "Na than der Weise" by Lessing provides a pleasant interlude between prose readings, and the year is agreeably rounded off with an anthology consisting of prose, poetic, and dramatic selections of major and minor German writers from Novalis to Nietache. A reading period completes the outline.
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