Re-reading Victor Klemperer

Re-reading Victor Klemperer

Mention VK as a memoir among types of methodologies to explore issues in the social sciences.

April 1945.. VK et Eva to: Munich to Dachau (5 April), back to Munich on 8 April. I was there in April, 1989, years before I read Klemperer.

Noting mention of Cassirer, Muhsam, and Laocoon.

Through YouTube, I have seen films mentioned by VK: "Der Betelstudent", "Habanera", "Vier Gesellen", and watched Jan Kiepura. 

Re-reading Jurgen Habermas "The New Conservatism", bought 9/11/91 whilst a doctoral student at Columbia. ($19.99 new, now $30.)

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=7868&ttype=2

Thinking about my upcoming online course "Methods of Research". Many ways of knowing yet must use a methodology that has an absolute baseline of an empirical understanding.

Excellent reading about concern for the poor and oppressed in the welfare state schema. Support for the lifeworlds of people. Thoughts of Polyani.

Concept of geist in relation to identifying "the intellectual" ... public advocacy of a college graduate who is not an elected official or representative. I always remind students of their being part of an "elite minority", the 33% or so of those with a real accreditated college degree.

The functional organization of higher education (per Talcott Parsons).

Bataille, dada, Fassbinder, Walter Benjamin cited.

Subjects not discussed since the world has changed since 1991. The end of the Soviet regime, German re-unification, issue of a role for Islam in the world.