Newsletter Fall 2020

Dear Alumni and Friends of the Pitt German Department,

I hope that this newsletter finds you in good health and good spirits. The Pitt Department of German is forging ahead despite this year’s challenges, and I would like to update you on some of those challenges as well as our successes.

We have felt the impact of COVID at Pitt, and our hearts go out to those who have been afflicted by and in some cases succumbed to COVID, to those who have lost employment, and to the many others whose lives have been disrupted by this awful illness. Although not life-threatening, the impact for our students has brought significant changes: last spring, classes were forced online, we could not run our annual drama performance, study abroad programs were postponed, and in-person graduation was canceled. Traditional student life changed dramatically.

Despite these challenges, our students and faculty have demonstrated both resilience and creativity in recent months, especially in light of a summer of unrest and a turbulent election season. Faculty members responded nimbly in moving their courses online in the spring and then, this Fall, to a Pitt-Flex mode, a hybrid model allowing both in-person and online instruction. This required countless hours of training beyond what is typically involved in course preparation. The Department sponsored an online series of events this Fall (read more in the “Campus Weeks” article) for which students and community members turned out in large numbers. And our students continue to be engaged, whether in classes, in departmental sponsored lectures, conversation hours, or game nights, or in student run activities such as German Club—all online now. I applaud both them and our faculty for pressing forward and keeping up spirits despite the challenges that face them.

Another big change in German at Pitt came when the financial impact of COVID prompted the university to offer retirement incentives to many employees. As a result, the German Department must now say “Auf Wiedersehen” to our esteemed colleague, Clark Muenzer, who retired at the end of the summer. Clark has served in most every position in the department and in prominent positions in scholarly organizations in our field. It will be difficult to imagine German at Pitt without him. We appreciate his dedication to our department and our students and wish him well in his retirement, especially as he works on his exciting new project, the Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts.

Despite these significant changes, Pitt in German remains strong. Read on in the newsletter to learn more about our engaged faculty (we highlight our Director of Language Studies, Prof. Viktoria Harms), our successful alumni (we talk with Eric Eissler), our successful fundraising campaign last spring, and our Campus Weeks event series this fall. We are excited for COVID restrictions to lift and look forward to meeting full-time in classrooms, staging in-person events, and sending students abroad again.

Thank you for your ongoing support for German at Pitt. Please keep in touch so that we can learn about the exciting things you have done with your German. Best way to do that? Fill out the Alumni News form and/or directly email your news to Prof. von Dirke (vondirke@pitt.edu) who is editing this and future newsletters. 

I wish you a happy holiday season and hope that you stay healthy and safe.

Sincerely,

John B. Lyon 
Professor and Chair