JBNU Department of German Studies conducted a global PBL (Problem-Based Learning) program during the break, traveling to Germany to connect literary texts with urban spaces and to experientially explore the meanings of modern German history and European integration.

The program, titled 'Walter Benjamin's Berlin Childhood around 1900 and the Berlin Urban Walk (Flaneur)', was carried out with the participation of 16 students from the Department of German Studies.

This project was made possible with support from Chairman Kim Jeong‑ok of the Kim Hee‑kyung European Intellectual Culture Foundation, who donated KRW 2 billion in 2019 to enable students to experience German language, literature, and Europe’s diverse intellectual cultures. Planned beyond conventional language-study–centered overseas experiences, it was designed as a global PBL educational setting in which students discover and discuss the humanities questions learned in the classroom on site.

The students began their approximately three-hour city walk at Stadtmitte Station and proceeded through Gendarmenmarkt, Humboldt University, Unter den Linden, the Brandenburg Gate, Tiergarten, and Potsdamer Platz.

Through this itinerary, they retraced in physical space the urban landscapes and modes of thought Walter Benjamin captured in 'Berlin Childhood around 1900' and read the city's texture where Berlin’s past and present intersect.

In particular, students read in the original language the wording of the Feuerbach theses engraved on the main staircase of Humboldt University's main building, and discussed the meaning of otherness and coexistence beneath an old ginkgo tree behind the university administration building.

At Gendarmenmarkt, known as a filming location for the film 'The Pursuit and Discovery of Love', they examined changes in the city's landscape over time. Touring the museums and galleries on Museum Island, they also experienced the scale and significance of Berlin’s accumulated artistic and cultural assets.

In the areas around the Brandenburg Gate, Tiergarten, and Potsdamer Platz, they explored the memories embedded in urban spaces with a focus on German reunification, the Cold War, and the history of division. Through the Holocaust memorial space beside the Brandenburg Gate, traces of the Berlin Wall, and Stolpersteine (Stolperstein) that citizens use to preserve memory in everyday life, students reflected together on historical reckoning, collective memory, and social responsibility.

Professor Kim Young-ryong (Department of German Studies), who guided the students, said, 'This program is significant because, beyond a simple overseas field trip, students walked through Berlin's spaces where literature, history, politics, and culture overlap and explored them directly. It provided an opportunity for students, who are accustomed to virtual spaces in the age of artificial intelligence, to confront historical traces in the city's streets, architecture, and monuments and to gain a renewed understanding of the topology of a metropolis and its relationship to human life.'