Events Calendar

Please join us for the annual Craig Lecture,

»I Want to Be Alone«

War and Media, the Past and the Future in Vicky Baum's Grand Hotel

Garbo's most famous quote was “I want to be alone.” In 2005, the American Film Institute voted it the 30th most memorable movie quotation of all time. It is derived from the 1932 film Grand Hotel, in which the Garbo-character famously makes this statement. Starting from the respective scene, the lecture will compare Vicki Baum’s original novel from 1929 (Menschen im Hotel) with its 1932 adaptation as well as a newer German adaptation from 1959, scrutinizing how the novel and the films might be read as providing an “histology” of aloneness. The lecture focuses on the Great War as the novel’s traumatic past on the one hand and the telephone as the hotel’s pivotal communication device on the other.

given by Spring 2018 Charlotte M. Craig Distinguished Visiting Professor, Bernhard Dotzler, from the University of Regensburg