“German was one of the most rewarding and surprising and unexpected – but amazing! – experiences I had at Duke” – Katja Kochvar (pictured at right, in Berlin)
In our second interview, Carlo Lindner (Mechanical Engineering, ‘20) and Katja Kochvar (Biology and German, minor Environmental Science, ‘20) detail their experience in a two-person philosophy class with Dr. Henry Pickford in Spring 2020. Currently, they are working on a translation project that stemmed from their work in the course. Author Christoph Hein and his publisher Suhrkamp Verlag gave Carlo and Katja permission to translate Der neuere, glücklichere Kohlhaas (The newer, happier Kohlhaas), which the two hope to publish in a journal upon completion.
***
What was it like taking a two-person class in German? What did you learn?
Katja: The class was originally a supplementary German-language section associated with the Marx-Nietzsche-Freud seminar. There weren’t many people enrolled, so it ended up being an Oxford-style tutorial where we read different moral philosophers.
Carlo: Because it was such a small class, we made it our own. We read texts about theories in moral philosophy: What actions are morally correct, and what actions aren’t? Then later on, we read texts from German authors and tried to apply what we learned about theory to these texts. We’d get really deep into those discussions. It was definitely my favorite German class. Whatever we thought was interesting to talk about, as long as it was related to moral philosophy, we got to talk about.
Katja: I think that class was the culmination of both of our German studies at Duke. I started out with German 101 my very first semester, and then my last semester I ended up taking a 400-level course on philosophy!
Carlo: Part of what prepared us for that course is that both of us spent significant time in Germany. I was in Germany the summer of 2019 interning with Audi, and Katja was in Berlin.
Katja: Yes, I was there from the end of January to the end of July taking classes with Duke in Berlin as well as some classes at the Freie Uni.
Carlo: It was nice coming back from that to take a course where we could keep practicing and discussing in German. I think a cool thing that sprung out of this class was that we got approved to translate a text that we read in class from German to English. It’s called Der neuere, glücklichere Kohlhaas by Christoph Hein.
Katja: He’s a GDR author.
Carlo: It’s not that well known, but maybe by translating to English we can get more of an audience for it.
Why should people read moral philosophy?
Carlo: I definitely entered the class with the same question! But reading these texts totally captured my attention, and even now I find myself trying to apply these concepts to current issues. It’s obviously super prevalent in politics. There’s no set path to figure out what is morally correct and what isn’t, but by learning about these different models, it encourages you to look at situations from different perspectives.
Katja: More frequently than you’d think, in the past couple months, we’d see a headline, remember a concept from class, and realize it actually applies to the situation! Or we’d realize they’re using a certain model, but if you look at it differently, it’s not necessarily so clear-cut what the right thing to do is. Liberals all think that they’re doing the morally correct thing, and Republicans think they’re doing the morally correct thing, and honestly there’s so much gray area.
Carlo: I think Covid is actually a great example of that. We discussed that in class quite a bit. Because you do have this conflict between what is best for the general public, like a utilitarian perspective – how can we ensure the highest health and happiness of the population? – versus how much do you value an individual life or an individual person?
Katja: There are a couple headlines out there about philosophers weighing in on Covid, which is fun to see too. You listen to health experts, and you have to listen to philosophers, and you listen to politicians – everyone can provide different perspectives.
Carlo: My favorite author to read in that class was Kafka. It’s so provocative … it’s just so dark and so shocking to read, and I think it often takes a concept and exaggerates it into these grotesque stories that really make you think about that concept in more depth. We read Die Strafkolonie, which was probably my favorite text.
What were some challenges you experienced when translating?
Carlo: I think that one of the biggest challenges in translating the text is to take these strange German words and translate them into English without sounding overly descriptive.
Katja: And trying to preserve the integrity of the sentence without making it sound really strange and unintelligible in English. It’s a really fine balance between trying to include everything and also making it not sound so wordy and redundant that the true meaning is lost. In every translation you inevitably have to include your own meaning – you can’t really do it word for word without sounding really strange.
What’s your favorite German word?
Carlo: Schildkröte, because the idea of a shielded toad is ridiculous.
Katja: Zwitschern, because it has a fun mouth feel!
DEPARTMENT of GERMAN STUDIES