Conference looks at Hamburg's role in German culture

Scholars from Germany, Cornell and other U.S. universities will meet for a three-day conference titled "Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism and National Culture: Public Culture in Hamburg 1700-2000," today, Nov. 1, through Saturday, Nov. 3, in the Guerlac Room of the A.D. White House on campus. The conference will explore the development of cultural practices in Hamburg, Germany, from the early Enlightenment to the present. The conference is free and open to the public

Hamburg has played a unique role among German cities, owing to its location on a major river with access to the sea, its function as an important trade and commerce center and its former status as a politically autonomous republic. As a means of illustrating Hamburg's influence on German culture, the conference will emphasize various disciplines, such as literature, music, architecture and theater. Two concerts in conjunction with the conference will be performed tonight and Friday at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall. (See the music listings in today's calendar.)

The conference will consist of lectures and discussions on a wide variety of related subjects, including: the rise of civic culture in the early Enlightenment; the formation of the literary public sphere; the relationship between public and private culture around 1800; the impact of modernization on public culture in the 19th century; the articulation of modernism in Hamburg; and the reconstruction of public culture after 1845 . There also will be an accompanying exhibit of contemporary photography, titled "Hamburg in Historical Views and Contemporary Photography," on display in the John Hartell Gallery of Sibley Hall.

Participants in the conference include: Mary Lindemann, Carnegie Mellon University; David Yearsley, Cornell; Herbert Rowland, Purdue University; John McCarthy, Vanderbilt University; Meredith Lee, University of California-Irvine; Annette Richards, Cornell; Julia Berger, Altonaer Museum, Hamburg; Katherine Aaslestad, West Virginia University; Christian Otto, Cornell; Roberta Moudry, Cornell; Bernd Kortlaender, Heinrich-Heine-Institut; Celia Applegate, Rochester Institute of Technology; Michael Steinberg, Cornell; Hans Rudolf Vaget, Smith College; Jennifer Jenkins, Washington University at St. Louis; Matthias Wegner, Hamburg; and David Bathrick, Cornell.

For further information, contact Julia Stewart, Institute of German Cultural Studies, by e-mail at js75@cornell.edu or phone at 255-8408. Or visit the conference web site at http://www.arts.cornell.edu/IGCS/events/Freud.htm.