{"id":213563,"date":"2026-05-28T10:13:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/?p=213563"},"modified":"2026-05-28T10:24:01","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:24:01","slug":"213563","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/2026\/05\/28\/213563\/","title":{"rendered":"Thirteen Students Return from Montclair in Munich and Berlin 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of thirteen Montclair students and their instructor, Thomas Herold<\/a>, just returned from Germany, where they spent twelve days in Munich, Nuremberg, and Berlin, visiting memorials, museums, and historical sites dealing with Germany\u2019s Nazi past and contemporary German post-Holocaust society. Attached to the German 227 Spring course, Nazi Cinema and Propaganda, this faculty-led study abroad trip builds on class discussions of German history, Fascist aesthetics, and film propaganda. The class allows students to visit sites such as the original staging area of notorious propaganda films like Leni Riefenstahl\u2019s Triumph of the Will (1935), and students gain a sensitivity for the tremendous impact that the Third Reich and its unspeakable crimes had on German post-war society, as well as how these historical events reverberate today.<\/p>\n

The trip included visits to the historical sites of the National Socialist Party Rallies in Nuremberg, the courtroom of the Nuremberg Processes, the atrium in the University of Munich\u2019s main building where the student members of the White Rose resistance movement were arrested while distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets, the Beer Hall where Hitler first tried to overthrow the German government in 1923, the Dachau Concentration Camp, and a number of historically significant places in Berlin, including the Reichstag, as well as the site of the atrocious 1933 book burning event.<\/p>\n

Students got to visit, study, and compare numerous memorial sites and places of remembrance, including the national Holocaust Memorial right next to the Brandenburg Gate, the Jewish Museum with its multiple experiential memorial features, and many \u201cStolpersteine\u201d in various cities – bronze \u201ctripping stones\u201d in the sidewalks that remind of the Jews who used to live in nearby buildings.<\/p>\n

In addition to a rather full program, students had free time to explore Munich and Berlin, get acquainted with German cuisine and public transportation, experience Karaoke and other aspects of German night life, and visit an opera show and other cultural performances. Among the highlights were the \u2018free\u2019 days. Splitting into two groups, some went to Salzburg, Austria, while others climbed the \u201cHirschberg,\u201d a 5,500-foot peak in the foothills of the Alps. On the free day in Berlin, students took advantage of the warm weather and went to the Wannsee beach, while others explored Berlin flea markets.<\/p>\n

Despite the trip\u2019s heavy and dark historical theme, many students regretted having to return after only 12 days. \u201cThis has been the highlight of my college education<\/em>,\u201d one student wrote in the trip evaluations. Others praised the \u201cunforgettable memories that will stay in my heart forever<\/em>\u201d and noted that they had gained \u201clifelong friendships<\/em>\u201d on the trip. German<\/a> and English<\/a> double major Matthew Hohmann noted: \u201cI spent 20 years having never left the country and after this trip I want to always be out of it.<\/em>\u201d Here\u2019s hoping that many other Montclair students will have the opportunity to study abroad, be it on a faculty-led trip like this one, in a summer program, or for a semester or year abroad. The students from this trip certainly caught the travel bug and many of them sure will return abroad one day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of thirteen Montclair students and their instructor, Thomas Herold, just returned from Germany, where they spent twelve days in Munich, Nuremberg, and Berlin, visiting memorials, museums, and historical sites dealing with Germany\u2019s Nazi past and contemporary German post-Holocaust society. Attached to the German 227 Spring course, Nazi Cinema and Propaganda, this faculty-led study […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":213566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,23,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-20_chss-news","category-7_homepage-news-and-events","category-197_world_languages_and_cultures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213563"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213570,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213563\/revisions\/213570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/chss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}