Goethe Chair endowment at the German Department at NYU, New York, NY
Dean Edward Sullivan,
Professors Eckart Goebel and Rüdiger Campe,
Katrin DiPaola,
Honoured guests,
Goethe is said to have said: who speaks longer than 10 minutes causes the justified anger of the audience. That is of course applicable only as long as Goethe was sitting in the audience and was not the speaker himself.
I felt challenged when asked to talk about the inauguration of the new “Goethe chair” and given a 10 minute time limit. If I where to talk about the chair only - without Goethe sitting on it- , 10 minutes would be ample time. But talking about the master himself for 10 minutes before such an distinguished audience of experts at NYU would have been a challenge perhaps even for Goethe himself.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In these times of global financial crisis and diminished sponsorship on both sides of the Atlantic, establishing the “Goethe chair” at NYU is an extraordinary event, a remarkable gift of generosity and farsighted decision. I would like to thank the sponsor, Eberhard Berent, professor emeritus of German at NYU, chairman of NYUs Department of German from 1964-1970 and friend of NYU for this magnificant contribution.
I would also like to congratulate NYU's Department of German for its excellent work. Establishing the Goethe chair is of course also a recognition of this excellent work.
This is really an important and extraordinary gift, which will foster teaching German as a foreign language, but also reach out far beyond that goal. Because Goethe and his cosmopolitan approach has not lost any of its relevance for today:
Goethes poem entiteld “To the United States” beginns with the famous line: “America, you’re better off”. This line reflects, if you will permit this boldness, Goethes own version of today’s “yes, you can”.
His reflections at and about the very beginning of transatlantic relations made two basic assumtions which in some ways still hold true today: on the one hand, he forsaw that freedom and democracy, democratic ideals, will forge the unseperable bond between old Europe and young America and become the origin of what today is referred to as “the West”. At the same time, Goethe was well aware and forshadowed that - given different cultures, traditions experiences and ressources - that it will not always be easy to translate this common bond into joint practical decisions. Or, as Thomas Mann so eloquently put it in his speech entitelted “Goethe and Democracy” which he held in the Library of Congress in 1949: Europe is more like Hamlet, and America is more like Fortinbras – a thought which of course still inspires many debates today. As then, today’s challenge is to translate our common values into common action, turning common challenges into joint opportunities and achievements.
One other – of the plenty – reasons why Goethe is and should be popular today, is his global vision, his explicit interest – favourable as well as sceptical – in the global scale of industrilization, his global strategic thinking. His classical works - such as “Faust Two” and the “Sorrows of Young Werther” - testify to this.
Goethe is not only an icon in literature, he is an inspiration for contemporary global thinking.
And so I would like to commend all those who have contributed to establishing the “Goethe chair” at NYU and extend my best wishes for a prosporous work to the future professor who will have the fortune to sit on and feel comforable in this chair.
Thank you.
