Honorary Degrees of Retiring Faculty
H. Hartmut Gerlach, Associate Professor of German, 1994
"Hans Hartmut Gerlach, since you came to Lawrence in 1966, a freshly earned Ph.D. from Indiana University in hand, you have introduced Lawrentians to the German language and to German culture and civilization. Your own university studies at Zurich, at Gottingen, and Tubingen came after the horrors of World War II, and your experience during those awful years, including those preceding the war, made yours a distinctive critical perspective from which to teach your subject. Like most boys in Germany at the time, you were confronted with expectations to participate in the national ideology of the day, but you chose another and subversive route: rather than take part in indoctrination exercises, you taught your fellow youngsters German folk songs.
The Germany you loved and love is not the Germany of your youth, but the Germany of Goethe, and especially of his Faust. It is also the Germany reflected in German cinema, and your innovative courses on the art of German film have been creative and pedagogical successes for several years. They have also stimulated you to remain alert to the changes in Germany since the end of the Cold War, and to examine and explain how the focus of German cinema changed after the Wall came down.
As director of Lawrence's programs in Germany, first in Eningen and then in Munich, you were a solicitous guide for Lawrentians who through you made especially close connections with a new place and a new culture.
You have described yourself as a teacher, rather than a scholar, but as 'a teacher with wide-spread scholarly interests.' And those, you have said, you will pursue once you are liberated form the 'usual time constraints.' Your plans to contemplate and to write about your experiences in a darker Germany are sure to sustain you as you move on to a new stage of your career, one in which you promise to be 'retired, but not retiring.' Your colleagues and your students wish you well.
By the authority vested in me, I now confer upon you the degree of Master of Arts, ad eundem, and admit you to its rights, its privileges, and its obligations."
