Course lists

Historical staff and course catalogues from universities and higher education institutions are a valuable source of information for the history of a discipline, enabling us to trace the academic activities of professors and lecturers at the respective institutions throughout their careers. In addition they document key areas of research and course content. These directories also shed light on the organisational structure of the institutions, as well as reorganisations of institutes, departments or chairs in their history.
When working with data from course catalogues, it is advisable to consult additional archival materials, such as personnel files from university archives, in order to verify the accuracy of the information, particularly with regard to the appointing of professors. It is therefore essential to be aware that course catalogues may contain errors.

The historical catalogues of the Gdańsk University of Technology covering the period from 1905 to 1944 are available via the Pomeranian Digital Library. They provide insight into the history of the departments and seminars within this educational institution founded in 1904 in Prussia as the Royal Institute of Technology. Regarding the history of the discipline of theatre studies the courses held in German literature which are dating back to the early years of the institution are relevant. An analysis of the data collected reveals who taught courses at the German Seminar, in what position, and when; when the post as a lecturer was upgraded to a professorship; and which topics were the focus of the courses and when. Courses on German literature were taught by a lecturer until the summer semester of 1922, and from the winter semester of 1926 onwards by a full professor of German Language and Literature. Changing the lecturer’s post to a professorship, however, also had a political dimension. Since 1920, Danzig had been the Free City of Danzig, a city-state under the protection and supervision of the League of Nations and separated from the post-war Weimar Republic. Consequently, German Philology in particular, within the Department of General Sciences at the Technical University, was assigned a special role in preserving the ‘Deutschtum’ in the Free City of Danzig. The post of a lecturer was held by Heinrich Löbner, a senior teacher and literary historian. The professorship, which served as the head of the German Seminar, was filled by Paul Kluckhohn, a literary scholar who had completed his habilitation at the University of Münster and was a co-founder of the Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft; following his appointment to the University of Vienna, Heinz Kindermann took over as head at the Gdańsk University of Technology from April 1927, who at that time held an associate professorship in literary history and aesthetics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna; over the years, he advanced to become an important Nazi literary and theatre scholar, and in 1936 moved to the University of Münster to take up the full professorship in German literary history, which had been created especially for him. From the autumn semester of 1937, the literary scholar Heinz Otto Burger appears in the course catalogue as a lecturer in the Department of German Studies; initially appointed on an interim basis as Kindermann’s successor, he was later appointed associate professor of German Language and Literature.

Between 1927 and 1936, Heinz Kindermann taught as Professor of German Language and Literature at the German Seminar at the Gdańsk Technical University. An analysis of the courses taught by Heinz Kindermann during this time is of particular interest to the history of German-language theatre studies, as it provides an insight, from a contemporary perspective, into the history of the discipline outside the German-speaking world. Furthermore, the course titles reveal key areas of research that were promoted in literary and theatre studies research and teaching during the Nazi era. During his time in Danzig (and beyond), Heinz Kindermann devoted himself to ‘Deutschtum’ in the East and published his German nationalist writings in relevant National Socialist media.

During the winter term of 1930, Heinz Kindermann, as professor of German language and literature, taught a course entitled "Theaterwissenschaftliche Übungen" (Exercises in Theatre Studies). It was the first course at the German Seminar in Danzig to explicitly focus on theatre studies. In the winter term of 1935, he continued to prioritise on theatre in his lecture "Geschichte des deutschen Volkstheaters" (History of German People's Theatre) and in the following semester in his seminar "Geschichte des ostdeutschen Theaters" (History of East German Theatre). Of his 94 courses held at the Technical University, three were related to theatre studies. As a professor in Danzig, he focused his research on literature from Danzig as so-called auslands- und grenzlandsdeutsche Literatur (German literature from abroad and the borderland). In this literature, in particular, he considered the preservation of Germanness in the East represented.