German for Reading Knowledge

Harvard Professor of German Peter J. Burgard studied literature, languages, philosophy, and art at The Johns Hopkins University (BA), law at the University of Cologne, German and English literature at the University of Bonn, and German literature at the University of Virginia (MA, PhD). He writes on poetry, drama, narrative, and the essay, on painting, sculpture, and architecture, and on intellectual history, ranging from the 16th to the 20th century. His publications include studies of Luther, Caravaggio, Bernini, Opitz, Gryphius, Grimmelshausen, Goethe, Herder, Lessing, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Mann, Kafka, Adorno, and Warhol. His teaching includes courses on early modern German cultural history, baroque art and literature, Goethe, the Age of Goethe, the ethics of atheism, Nietzsche, Freud, and fin-de-siecle literature and art. In his courses Advanced Grammar & Reading and German for Reading Knowledge, he teaches undergraduates and graduate students how to read sophisticated German literary and philosophical texts with precision.