TRANSIT BLOG

TRANSIT Blog was formerly part of the Multicultural Germany Project (MGP), which we are now merging with Transit Journal. Founded in 2001 by the German Department at UC Berkeley, MGP served as a research collaborative and continuously updated archive of migration, supported by the tireless energy and willpower of our very own Deniz Göktürk and UC Berkeley’s graduate students. Our blog includes reactions to current events and news, research materials, and teaching resources. Maintained mainly by students at Berkeley, the blog provides a window into our activities and campus discussions. We hope that TRANSIT Blog continues to serve as a resource and forum for both aspiring and continuing professionals in German Studies and its adjacent fields; we welcome contributions of short thought-pieces of ca. 1000-1500 words year-round. If you would like to contribute your own blog post or other materials (in English or German), please contact us at transitjournal@berkeley.edu.

  • Hörspiele zum NSU-Prozess: Teil I – “Saal 101”

    The 2021 election year in Germany is destined to be a year of heated political debates on the country’s past and future. While right-wing extremism is still on the rise in some parts of Germany, politicians and legal practitioners are more determined to combat xenophobia and violence than ever. In a new three-part series for…

  • The NSU Trial in Radio Plays: Part I – “Saal 101”

    The 2021 election year in Germany is destined to be a year of heated political debates on the country’s past and future. While right-wing extremism is still on the rise in some parts of Germany, politicians and legal practitioners are more determined to combat xenophobia and violence than ever. In a new three-part series for…

  • Jule Thiemann: Digitale Fluchtnarrative und Postmigrantische Perspektiven

    The latest installment in our Mission Possible series of reflections on the future of German Studies comes courtesy of Dr. Jule Thiemann of the University of Hamburg’s Institut für Germanistik, who argues that the field must turn towards expanding the field of canonical literature to include postmigrant engagement with small forms, digital modes of writing…

  • Jule Thiemann: Postmigrant Perspectives and Digital Narratives of Flight

    The latest installment in our Mission Possible series of reflections on the future of German Studies comes courtesy of Dr. Jule Thiemann of the University of Hamburg’s Institut für Germanistik, who argues that the field must turn towards expanding the field of canonical literature to include postmigrant engagement with small forms, digital modes of writing…

  • Frau Kutzer und andere Bewohner der Naunystraße (Frau Kutzer and Other Residents of Naunyn Street)

    With Tunçel Kurtiz, Güner Yüreklik, Krikor Melikyan and Aras Ören. Aras Ören’s book-length poem Was will Niyazi in der Naunynstraße? finds its visual complement in this 1973 adaptation by director Friedrich W. Zimmermann, which features the war-widow Frau Kutzer, the philosopher-guest worker Niyazi, as well as other characters passing through the street. The street itself…

  • Tödlicher Hass: Der Mordfall Walter Lübcke

    The German broadcaster ARD’s documentary about the 2019 murder of Walter Lübcke, a local politician with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who actively promoted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy in the state of Hesse, was released amid a flurry of media attention to the trial of his neo-Nazi killers in the summer of 2020. The…

  • The Murder of Halit Yozgat

    Commissioned by the People’s Tribunal ‘Unraveling the NSU Complex’, this documentary report by the research agency Forensic Architecture casts severe doubt on the official narrative around the neo-Nazi murder of Halit Yozgat, who was shot to death at his parents’ Kassel internet cafe apparently in the presence of Andreas Temme, an agent of the Verfassungsschutz…

  • Spuren – Die Opfer des NSU (Traces – The NSU Victims)

    Aysun Bademsoy’s documentary focuses on the families of the victims of the serial murders of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) between 2000 and 2007, which German police and media originally ascribed to “foreign” criminal enterprises with explicitly racist imagery like the neologism Dönermorde, coined to mock the killings before the culprits were identified in 2011.…

  • Christine Korte: The Volksbühne as Archive

    As a new year brings a new presidential administration to the helm of government in the political tinderbox of the United States, the Multicultural Germany Project is delighted to feature the latest entry in our Mission Possible commentary series on the purpose of German Studies from Christine Korte, one of our international collaborators at York…

  • Mitten in Deutschland: NSU (NSU German History X)

    With Anna Maria Mühe, Albrecht Schuch, and Sebastian Urzendowsky. A dramatized account of the serial murders of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) between 2000 and 2007 comes to life in this German-language, in-house production from Netflix. The three-part miniseries introduces the three core members of the NSU, Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos, and Uwe Böhnhardt (Mühe,…