VALDOSTA — As the world commemorates the 20th anniversary this week of the fall of the Berlin Wall, two Valdosta State University professors are planning a German trip for students next year.

Dr. Charles Johnson and Dr. Michael G. Noll are preparing a VSU Study Abroad program which will visit select German cities between May 13 and June 5 of 2010.

Noll will lead a course on German culture. Johnson will lead a course called “Hitler’s Vision: Europe’s Nightmare.”

While students will enroll in one or the other class, the program will take them to the same sites. They will visit the German cities of Berlin, Dresden, Weimar, and Bonn. Most VSU Study Abroad programs pinpoint one international city, making it the home base for the students’ stay.

This journey is different in that it is a mobile program, Johnson says, with students spending several days in several cities. In traveling to the region of study, students come away with a more profound understanding.

Students can read about Adolf Hitler and the Germany of the Third Reich, but in a study abroad program they can stand where Hitler spoke. They can read stories about the Holocaust; in this program, they will visit the echoed horror within the concentration camps.

They can read how Germany was once a collection of small states before forging itself into a premier nation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; now, they can visit the land that gave birth to so much intellectual and cultural creativity — Martin Luther, the Brothers Grimm, Goethe, Beethoven — before slipping the reins to the madness of Nazi Germany.

They can hear news reports this week of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but, on this trip, the students can discover the life of a unified Germany in the 21st century.

All of these varied German pasts, from the majestic to the horrific, can be found in modern Germany. Everything is public and in the open.

“Young Germans have been learning about the Third Reich since grade school,” Johnson says. “Germany has acknowledged and apologized for what happened. Given the rise of new generations, the country would like to move on.”

Students will prepare class work prior to the trip. They complete written assignments before leaving for Germany. The advance studies prepare them for the history of what they will see but not necessarily the impact.

Johnson mentions a past visit to a concentration camp.

“We visited a prototype gas chamber and the ovens where millions died in the Holocaust,” Johnson says. “The students, you could tell by their faces, it hit them so hard.”

Germany Trip