Martin Kagel, Werner Fritsch, Norbert Otto Eke February 2016 was an eventful time in Germanic & Slavic Studies at UGA, as the month began with the arrival of two visitors to the department. Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor Norbert Otto Eke (Universität Paderborn) joined the department faculty on February 1 and acclaimed German author Werner Fritsch came to Athens for two days ten days later. Professor Eke will be here until mid-April, teaching a graduate seminar on “Freemasons, Illuminati, and Secret Societies in German Literature.” For our students it is a true privilege to have the opportunity to take a class with a scholar of the caliber of Norbert Eke who is widely published and a sought after speaker in Germany. He, in turn, is enjoying his stay at the University of Georgia, for which he has had ample praise, from the quality of the library to the students’ positive attitude and active participation in his class. He and his wife Dagmar are also enjoying the culinary and cultural offerings of Athens. Dr. Eke’s stay at UGA is part of a new program supported by the Max Kade Foundation, which has been in existence since 2015 and allows us to bring a distinguished German scholar to campus once a year. Dr. Norbert Otto Eke with his Graduate Seminar Class Werner Fritsch was invited to campus to read from his play Nico – Sphinx of Ice and to introduce the screening of his ambitious film project, the cinematic poem Faust Sonnengesang. Fritsch’s play focuses on the relationship between the German model, actress and singer Nico—of the Velvet Underground—and her one-time lover Jim Morrison. In a reversal of the Orpheus myth, Nico here evokes the dead Morrison as source and inspiration for her own artistic growth. The reading was accompanied by a remarkable 25-minute image and sound installation created by three graduate students working for UGA’s center Ideas for Creative Exploration. They were excited to have the opportunity to talk to the author himself after they had engaged with his work. Fritsch’s visit was topped off with the Friday screening of his cinematic poem, whose title alludes to Goethe’s seminal play Faust. In his film poem, Fritsch uses the Faustian moment of self-fulfillment as a starting point, attempting to extend into a sequence of images and words that encourage the viewers to find meaning and beauty in their own associations with Fritsch’s Song of the Sun. And it was, indeed, a very special moment when following the screening, students, faculty members, the distinguished visiting professor and the artist himself talked about the film, the project, life at the university and things to come on that Friday evening in the auditorium of UGA’s Lamar Dodd School of Art.
