History

The roots of Romance studies in Dresden

In Dresden, the academic teaching of Romance languages began in the 19th century: in 1831, compulsory French lessons were introduced at the then Technical College. As a result of Saxony's accelerated industrialization, the training of specialist engineers for the Saxon labour market came to the fore, which is why the Polytechnic School was founded in 1851. Familiarity with the English and French languages is a prerequisite for studying engineering and natural sciences and remains an important part of the curriculum.

From 1884, Italian was added to the range of Romance languages taught, followed by Spanish in 1893. With the appointment of Wilhelm Scheffler as Associate Professor of French and English Technical Language, Parliamentary Stenography and Foreign Language Stenography, in particular French, English and Norwegian, the close link between scientific and technical training and technical language training is subsequently cultivated. This can be seen, for example, in the title of Scheffler's lecture series "The technical language (French and English)". In other events and lecture series, Scheffler explicitly combined the technical sciences with reflections on literature and art.

In 1890, the Polytechnic School finally became a technical college. Until the First World War, the teaching of Romance languages now focused on French.

The Chair of Romance Languages

The history of Romance studies in Dresden in the narrower sense did not begin until 1914, when the first Chair of Romance Languages was established at the Technische Hochschule and Hans Heiss was appointed. During his tenure, the Chair of Romance Languages also provided a substantial part of the courses offered at the Dresden University of Technology's foreign seminar, which was founded in 1918 as an interdisciplinary form of education to provide students with an insight into the economic conditions abroad and the cultural conventions of its inhabitants.

The appointment of Victor Klemperer as full professor of Romance languages and co-director of the foreign seminar at the TH Dresden in 1920 further strengthened Dresden's Romance studies. Klemperer now shifted the focus of his teaching from technical language training to the teaching of literary studies. In his teaching, he focuses primarily on epochs and authors in the history of French literature, but also holds tutorials in French, Italian and Spanish. In the field of research, he advocates a renewal of philology by moving away from the positivist history of literature that is common at the time and pleading for philology to be opened up to philosophy and related fields of knowledge. Klemperer's approach focuses on a literary-scientific examination of the interdisciplinary history of ideas, which examines the interplay between the ideal and the social. His aim was always to highlight the cultural exchange between linguistically or nationally differentiated groups. Victor Klemperer published the majority of his Romance studies publications during his time at the Technische Hochschule Dresden; even the racial laws of National Socialism and the gradual intensification of repression could not completely stop him in his academic work.

Romance studies in Dresden under National Socialism

During the Nazi regime, Klemperer had hardly any student audiences and was forcibly demerited at the end of April 1935 due to his Jewish descent. Despite being ostracized and threatened on a daily basis, Klemperer did not emigrate, but initially tried to expand his research activities, until the ban on the use of libraries finally made this impossible in 1938. In 1943, he was finally sentenced to forced labor, first in a tea factory and later in a paper factory. Until the end of the war, Mr. and Mrs. Klemperer were housed in "Jewish houses" in Dresden, most recently in Zeughausstraße, and were able to flee to Bavaria at the end of the war.

At the Technical University, the teaching of Romance studies in the form of language exercises continued until the winter semester of 1936/37, but the subject had already been weakened before 1933 and was only offered as supplementary study content for engineers. In 1936, the Romance Studies Department was finally incorporated into the History Department and foreign language training in a technical language context was abandoned. In 1941, Italian and Spanish language exercises were resumed, and from 1944, French language practice was added.

Teaching Romance languages after the Second World War

Victor Klemperer returned to Dresden in June 1945, was reappointed to the Technische Hochschule Dresden in November of the same year and joined the KPD at the same time. He held the Chair of Romance Philology in Dresden until 1948, but was also active in university politics in the Soviet occupation zone from 1945. From 1947, Klemperer was successively appointed to the universities of Greifswald, Halle and (East) Berlin, but took on guest professorships in Dresden in 1952 and 1954-56.

Despite Klemperer's reinstatement, Romance Studies did not regain its former strength after the reopening of the Dresden University of Technology in 1946, and the teaching of Romance languages and literatures took a back seat: from 1952, the main focus was on teaching Russian and English. It was not until 1953 that the learning of a second language became compulsory during specialist studies, usually English. In 1954, training in foreign languages is combined in the language teaching department. French is added to the offer and Spanish in 1962. Courses in Italian are only held occasionally.

In 1961, the Technical University was given its current name. The name change to the Technical University was accompanied by structural changes to the Department of Language Teaching, which eventually became the Applied Linguistics Section in 1981. In addition to the three Romance languages already offered, Portuguese is now also taught here. Overall, however, it can be said that the Technical University did not have a complete Romance Studies department until reunification, but instead limited itself to the teaching of linguistic knowledge, particularly in the field of technical languages, and at times to linguistic research into Spanish, Portuguese and French.

Romance studies after reunification

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, there is a great demand for courses in French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. In the winter semester of 1991/1992, for example, around 1,000 students attend French courses at TU Dresden, while the number of participants in Spanish courses increases fivefold to over 270 compared to the pre-reunification period. As a result of this development, a specialist language center is founded at TU Dresden in order to generally ensure foreign language training for students of all Faculties at different levels.

With the expansion of TU Dresden into a full-spectrum technical university (now TUD Dresden University of Technology again), master's and teacher training courses in the philological disciplines are established for the first time. These are combined in the Faculty of Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies, which was founded in 1993. The Institute of Romance Studies was founded on May 11, 1994 and complements the Dresden philological disciplines of English and American Studies, German Studies, Classical Philology and Slavic Studies. The Institute of Romance Studies is responsible for the French, Spanish and Italian language areas within and outside of Europe and follows the innovative policy of the faculty's foundation with the denominations of its professorships: for the first time, in addition to classical Professorships of Literature and Linguistics, cultural studies-oriented Professorships are also filled for each language area. A lectureship in the didactics of Romance languages, which is eventually converted into a Junior Professorship, increases the number of Chairs at the Institute to eight. Language training at the Institute of Romance Studies is carried out by lecturers for French, Spanish and Italian.

In the context of the consolidation of the Romance studies degree programs, teaching, research and cultural centers are founded in the following years, which expand the range of Romance studies in Dresden and bring it to the university and the city public. The CIFRAQS - Center for Interdisciplinary Franco-Canadian and Franco-American Research / Québec-Saxony was founded in 1994, followed by the Latin American Center, from which today's study program for non-Romanists ReLa - Regional Studies Latin America with the cultural, linguistic and economic target regions Brazil and Hispano-America will emerge. These Romance studies initiatives are complemented by the Italy Center, which coordinates cultural and, in particular, academic exchange between Italy and Saxony as an interdisciplinary Competence Center of the TU.

The Institute of Romance Studies at TU Dresden today

The restructuring of the Institute, which was initiated in 2012 in accordance with the SMWK's requirements and the Faculty Board's decision, has resulted in a comprehensive reduction in the range of courses on offer with the discontinuation of Spanish. The reorganization reduces the number of professorships to five: two linguistic professorships and two professorships in literary and cultural studies, which were newly appointed in 2014 and which, together with the Junior Professorship for Didactics of Romance Languages, teach French and Italian Studies in particular in subject-specific and teaching-related degree programs. The interdisciplinary Master's degree program in European Languages (EuroS) and the Bilateral Master's program of TU Dresden and the Università degli Studi di Trento are added to the undergraduate French and Italian studies program at Bachelor's and Master's level and as part of the state examination programs in Italian and French. Hispanic/Spanish can still be studied as a module in the BA Romance Studies, in the Master's EuroS and as part of the ReLa Regional Studies Latin America program for non-Romance students. The Institute of Romance Studies also opens its courses in the supplementary area and in AQua for students of the Faculty of Linguistics, Literature and Cultural Studies or the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Research at the Institute of Romance Studies is wide-ranging and covers literary, cultural, linguistic and didactic issues. The historical approach ranges from the early modern period to the present day. The facilities of the Institute of Romance Studies continue to exist: ReLa offers Latin American Studies within the TU, the Italy Center coordinates events on the Italian cultural area, the CIFRAQS has been transformed into the CFF - Centrum Frankreich|Frankophonie.

At the level of internationalization, which the TU Dresden is vigorously pursuing, the Institute of Romance Studies can boast a number of initiatives in addition to the existing personal and institutional contacts that regularly bring colleagues, authors, filmmakers and journalists from other countries to Dresden to give lectures. In addition to the activities of the teaching, research and cultural centers and programs based at the Institute, Dresden Romance Studies maintains 28 Erasmus partnerships in the Romance-speaking world, in addition to the university partnerships of TU Dresden, which enable students and lecturers to spend Erasmus stays. The Institute of Romance Studies also coordinates TU Dresden's strategic partnership with the Università degli Studi di Trento.

The Institute of Romance Studies promotes cultural exchange, welcomes international students and colleagues and conveys cosmopolitanism and tolerance.

Sources

• Gärtner, Eberhard: "Zur Geschichte der Romanistik an der Technischen Universität Dresden und ihren Vorgängereinrichtungen", in : Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Technischen Universität Dresden 42.4 (1993), pp. 82-88.
• Hausmann, Frank-Rutger: "Engulfed by the maelstrom of events". German Romance Studies in the "Third Reich". Frankfurt am Main 2000, pp. 128-132, pp. 269-286.
• Lieber, Maria: "Victor Klemperer an der Technischen Hochschule Dresden in den Jahren 1920-1935", in: Rohbeck, Johannes; Wöhler, Hans-Ulrich (eds.): Auf dem Weg zur Universität. Cultural Studies in Dresden 1871-1945. Dresden 2001, pp. 250-263.
• Rohbeck, Johannes: "Victor Klemperer's conception of cultural studies and the history of French literature in the 18th century", in: Rohbeck, Johannes; Wöhler, Hans-Ulrich (eds.): Auf dem Weg zur Universität. Cultural Studies in Dresden 1871-1945. Dresden 2001, pp. 264-274.
• Sauer, Hans: "Anglistik und Anglisten an der Technischen Hochschule Dresden (mit Ausflügen in die Romanistik und Germanistik)", in: Rohbeck, Johannes; Wöhler, Hans-Ulrich (eds.): Auf dem Weg zur Universität. Cultural Studies in Dresden 1871-1945. Dresden 2001, pp. 275-289.