Description

The International Summer University at ECLA is an interdisciplinary program which asks students to engage with crucial ethical, political, aesthetic and epistemic questions. In 2011, the theme of the University is the intellectual legacy of Prussia, the state of which Berlin was once the capital. It explores the classic works of German and European philosophy in relationship to the conditions in which they were written, including the art and architecture of Berlin and its former world.

Prussia was always as much an idea or myth as an historical place. Originating in the fusion of an electorate (Brandenburg) of the Holy Roman Empire with an easterly duchy, it grew to sudden prominence in the era of Enlightenment, through militarized planning and territorial conquest. The locus of strenuous educational efforts to mold individuals into servants of the state, it resisted the twin nineteenth-century forces of liberalism and nationalism only to become the agent of the creation of Germany. Prussia was finally dissolved as a legal entity at the end of the Second World War: it was regarded then (and since) as an origin for the cults of order and authority characterizing the Third Reich - a view anticipated by representations of the Prussian character in German modernism. In the landscape of contemporary Berlin, the Prussian heritage is an important component of public space, its bourgeois and aristocratic splendor preserving a nostalgic appeal, amid awareness of its compromised significance. Combining historical investigation with the study of works by Kant, Hegel, Kleist, Hoffmann, Clausewitz, Fontane, Mann and Broch, the curriculum focuses on the problem of the relation between citizen and state, and the development and meaning of the idea of history. It considers how literature registers the impact of these forms on the individual body, as well as the role of myths of Prussia in modernist attempts to diagnose the problems of the twentieth century. Based around a core program of lectures and seminars, the ISU incorporates contributions on special topics by guest speakers, in addition to museum visits and excursions to sites of importance in Berlin and the former Prussia.

Highlights

* Small seminar groups
* Regular writing assignments
* Individual attention in one-to-one tutorials
* Exploring the city as part of the curriculum
* Residential campus
* International community

Minimum Education

High School

Subject Areas

Cost in US$:

4.500 EUR

Program Fees Include:

The comprehensive fee of 4.500 EUR includes tuition, campus accommodation, full board, books on loan, reading materials, class excursions, emergency medical insurance, internet access and entrance to sports facilities.

Experience Required

no

This Program is open to

Worldwide Participants.

Typical Living Arrangements

• Group living

Participants Travel

Independently

Scholarships are Available

Financial aid is available. ECLA is committed to providing financial assistance grants to all successful applicants based on demonstrated financial need.

Application Process Involves

• Letters of Reference
• Resume
• Transcript
• Written Application
• Phone/Video Interview

ECLA European College of Liberal Arts's Mission Statement

ECLA is a private, non-profit institution of higher education. Philantropic grants allow the college to have a need-blind admissions policy and no qualified student is turned away for lack of funding. Each year 40-50 students who are serious about their education live and study together in Berlin. They are taught in small seminars and one-to-one tutorials by a select, young faculty who believe that education can be more than the preparation for a job. ECLA believes that certain problems concerning politics, morality, art and knowledge have a claim on everyone's attention, and that rigorous and genuine dialogue concerning them is a real achievement. We pursue these dialogues in the classroom - through the close study of texts and works of art that have shaped or seek to shape the values we live by - and beyond the classroom.

Year Founded

2000