WHEN I DELIVERED MY FIRST LECTURE at a German university some thirty years ago, I was advised by an eminent professor: “If you want to be acknowledged as an up-and-coming intellectual, you should divide your speech into three parts. For the first part you must make sure that everyone in the room can fully understand what you are saying. The second part of your speech should address only the experts in your field, and the third part should be made so complicated that nobody in the audience can fully grasp what you are talking about.”

Well, I know that it would not be a good idea to follow this piece of advice on an occasion like this (nor did I follow it back then, and that may well be one of the reasons why I ended up in a position outside the university sector, with VolkswagenStiftung). Instead I will try to adhere to the advice a colleague of mine, John Cowan at New College Oxford, provided to his undergraduates with respect to their essays on modern German literature: “Always think about your three main points.” For the students it turned out to be a very helpful piece of advice, last but not least with respect to their ability to cope with the time constraints of usually one-hour examinations in various specialties. Many of them ultimately obtained first-class degrees.

I will also try to focus on three main points and—with the help of titles of songs written by Bob Dylan—put them simply in historical order (past, present, future): I. “Things Have Changed”; II. “The Times They Are A-Changin’”; and III. “A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall.”

“Things Have Changed”—A Few Spotlights on My Path into Germanistik and Out of It

Those of you who know the lyrics of Bob Dylan's “Things Have Changed” will remember the line: “Only a fool in here would think he's got anything to prove” (Lyrics, 107). I think this could even serve as a leitmotif for the whole symposium.

But when Mike Lützeler approached me with respect to tonight's speech, a poem by Wystan Hugh Auden also immediately came to mind.