Dear visitors, dear visitors!

Since the 19^th Century, the humanities (the German term is ‘Geisteswissenschaften’) have been part of the traditional subject canon of universities. In contrast to the concept of nature, the term ‘Geist’ (in English: ‘spirit’ or ‘mind’, though this translation does not adequately capture the semantics of the term) stands for the totality of the complex manifestations of culture - the humanities can therefore be understood as specifically culture-reflecting sciences. As such, they explore culture both in its present and past manifestations. On the one hand, this means investigating the past manifestations of culture as such, but on the other hand, it is also means making understandable the way our present has become by referring to our past. Furthermore, in this context, the humanities have the critical tasks of connecting the cultural present and past to society's normative discourse of self-understanding and of comprehensively addressing all aspects of manifestations of culture at a scientific level. In this way, the humanities participate in the cultural self-understanding process of society in its whole breadth and diversity. This diversity also gives rise to their specific profile of research, which is characterised by methodological plurality and by research that is often conducted by individual researchers instead of big research groups. Today, it is important to defend this characteristics of research in the humanities against scientistic tendencies to force scientific method to conform to the methods of natural sciences, as well as against an economically dictated narrowing of research topics, which would cause the central function of the humanities, namely to provide orientation within the plurality of a modern life, to be lost from view.

The Faculty of Humanities at the UDE is one of the largest of its kind in Germany. The humanities can be studied in almost their entire breadth and its diciplines can be freely combined with one another. The latter fact already points to the special nature of a humanities degree programme: Unlike programmes of many other faculties, the disciplines of the humanities are characterised in that they do not prepare students for a particular profession or a very specific field of job activity. In contrast to a training (‘Ausbildung’) that imparts specific competencies for specific professional environments, the students of the humanities acquire education (‘Bildung’) in the comprehensive Humboldtian sense. Studying the humanities does not impart any job-specific competences, but rather the ability to deal with ever new problems, to assess them in terms of how they have developed and in terms of their potential consequences, and to be able to articulate them in an adequate, solution-oriented manner. The humanities sensitise students to recognise and deal with complex, constantly changing problems. It is precisely in these general and in the best sense unspecialised abilities where the value and appeal of a humanities degree lies. Contrary to a widespread cliché that says otherwise, the high degree of flexibility and the ability to quickly familiarise themselves with complex problems make graduates of a humanities degree programme attractive for businesses operating under the conditions of a free market where working fields and problems undergo dynamic change all the time.

Finally, studying the humanities also fosters one's own (self-)critical appraisal of culture in a special way. The study of the humanities is an important part of the educational path that produces autonomous, reflective and informed persons – who alone will be able to guarantee a stable democratic and liberal constitution of their community.

I cordially invite you to inform yourself about the teaching and research activities of our faculty on the following pages.

Yours sincerely,

Dirk Hartmann

Dean of the Faculty of Humanities