Anna's Study Abroad 2024

  This is me at the Reichstag! This is where the German parliament meets. The choice of building is very symbolic because it has a long history. On January 18th 187, the new German Empire was formed and this building was the seat of parliament for the state. After the First World War the monarchy was done away with and Germany proudly flew their red gold and black colors, symbolizing their full democracy! After the war though, Germany faced some real repercussions from the treaty of Versailles and the people were struggling. This crisis allowed the Nazi party to rise. Hitler hated the democratic symbol of the Reichstag and a fire was started under mysterious circumstances and burned parliament down. Hitler claimed it was a communist attack and used it to claim emergency power. They essentially torched the symbol of democracy. After the war, Germany was divided and the wall went up, this became a museum. Once the wall fell, Germany sought to be unified once more under a democratic g...

  This is a picture of me as we walked to visit the Albertina in Vienna. It was seriously one of my favorite art museums I have been to on this trip because the majority of art was post impressionism and beyond. There was one piece, my opinion, that stood out from the rest. It was called: Gebirgslandschaft mit Automobil, or Mountain Landscape with Automobile. It was done by Franz Sedlacek in 1931. I attached a picture of the painting as well. It was so jarring because the style is highly reminiscent of 2D animated films, yet it was done in oil. The mountains, pathways, and bridge are in no way realistic in structure, but they create balance and movement that direct our eyes to the car. The bright red automobile pops out significantly in the dreary landscape. Part of this style is created by making the shadows and backlighting highly dramatic. I literally sat and stared at it for a good ten minutes.  So why in the wide world is this important? From what I gather, it was importa...

We had a really moving day on Sunday and I wanted to take about the story of Louisa Gregor! She was born in 1862 and started taking piano lessons at age 6. She was a highly gifted pianist and even played for the zar of Russia four years later when she was ten! When she reached twelve, she started composing and one of her teaches said that she was the real thing. Her music life slowed down when she got married and proceeded to have three sons, however, she still continued to teach and preform on the side. After a rough divorce, she used music to wholly support herself! She was well liked and managed to get by and write some beautiful pieces. The sad part is that right across the street from where she lived, a Nazi organization Aktion T4 at Tiergartenstrasse was becoming highly involved with the idea of eugenics and creating an elite race. This meant killing or sterilizing all those who were intellectually disabled, autistic, gay, deaf, depressed, elderly, and more. When Louisa got put i...

After the Berlin wall came down, there was a big debate on how to remember Germany’s  horrible role in the murdering of just about six million Jews. A British architect came up with the structure for this memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe using undulating hills and rigid blocks of varied heights. At first it seems small and shallow, but as you walk in, you find yourself surrounded with towering blocks of concrete. It created a thought provoking landscape that is unique to the individual. This was the aim of the British architect. He wanted people to come here and get what they needed out of the experience. It essentially provides a space to think and a landscape for us to project on. So what was my reaction? To me the blocks of concrete represented both Nazi ideals or institutions, and secondly the staggering, resultant deaths of millions caused by the Nazi regime. It was almost like they visually showed the weight and consequence of that time. It felt oppressive as you walke...

Käthe Kollwitz is regarded as one of the most well known women artists of her time, and is still quite famous for her work. She was born in 1847 into a facility with rather progressive parents. Her father who was trained as a doctor but worked in construction recognized her artistic talent early on and encouraged it. She was able to study in her early ears and even attend schooling for women artists. She realized that she wasn’t a fan of color, but she was a master of lighting, movement and line and so she focused on charcoal, lithography, and sculpture. She married a doctor who worked things out so that he could sometimes be helping in the home so that Käthe could continue to pursue her already successful art career. They had three kids and she believed that having children helped her art and her art helped her be a better mother. That is a beautiful sentiment to me. Expressionist themes of motherhood and children, protection, and pacifism were all over her later works—her earlier rea...

  This is me next to the statue of Lise Meitner at a local university in Berlin Germany. She was born in Austria in the October of 1878 and was the second woman there to graduate in physics, but because she couldn’t get a lab space because of her gender, her work took her to Berlin. She had some influential friends help get her a space, but it really was just a wood shop. She was a brilliant woman and an outstanding scientist. She and her partners, both named Otto, discovered nuclear fission by bombarding Protactinium 231. And she started gaining some recognition but once WWII started she lost everything. She was a Jew and fled to Sweden. She continued her work and over the course of her life was nominated 49 times for the Nobel prize but never received it. Frustratingly her partner Otto did receive it. The most admirable thing is that she was invited to work on the Manhattan project but she refused because she had the foresight to understand the consequences that project would ent...

This is the Skansen Open Air Museum in Stockholm, Sweden! It was the first open air museum of its kind. Its end goal is to preserve the folk culture of Sweden. It started with just houses that showed how people of the past lived. From there it added other things such as a Glass blower house, pottery, bakeries, markets, a book printer, concerts, and folk dancing! It shows the many different eras of Swedish history, not just one. We also walked around the zoo which was so fun. My favorite animal was probably the seals. We also tried to see the folk dancing, but couldn’t find it. I did eat a donut at the market and it was the most delicious thing that I had ever had. I liked how they included a market because this was a tradition of the past that they mixed with the present. That is the whole idea of this park. This open air museum is very culturally important because it is essentially preserving many different time periods of Swedish culture at once. This helps visitors to get a better g...

  This is me and some buddies right outside parliament near where Greta Thunberg would actively protest  during her “schools strike for climate” campaign. She wanted to raise awareness for environmental awareness. She wanted people to “panic” so that change would actually happen. She would skip school, later only Fridays, to prove an important point—that if the adults didn’t care about her future on this earth, the. She shouldn’t have to care about her future either. She was trying to show her immense fear that there would not be a pleasant future ahead if humans continue to mistreat the planet. The response to her protest was kinda amazing in my opinion because her fellow classmates and others around the globe rallied around her. Despite this, she still had to be the one to start the discussion and put herself out there. She is an important girl to be discussed because she spoke out, was bold, and raised some important concerns. She got people thinking and simultaneously show...

This is the piece Dawn Chorus by Kevin Beasley, and normally I’m not the biggest fan of modern art but I really like this creation! When I was first looking at it, I had no idea what the title was but It gave me the impression of sky and trees.  It is filled with movements of numberless colors that draw your eye all over the piece, not just in one direction. The heavy emphasis on movement makes the piece seem alive and really does give the idea of a chorus of many colors all working together. Color is so important to mention because  the warm tones near the center contrast against the cool tones background. Wisely placed greens and yellows even out the transition to create a dawn sky scene. This piece is beautiful but I think it is important because it is innovative. It is made with layers of wool and some kind of resin or polymer. It  makes it pop in a 3D way with depth. It breaks out of the box and is part of the modern art world’s mission to redefine what art can be. A...

This is an impressive statue of Kristina Cylledtierna. So the story goes that after her husband died she took power in Sweden and refused to abdicate until her sons were of age. She stood her ground and the people of Sweden loved her. She stood fast when Christian II was attempting to take over and during the siege could be found going up and down the lines, encouraging the troops. She was greatly respected as a woman leader. Eventually Christian the 2nd does manage to gain a foothold and she is taken to Denmark as a political prisoner where she had to experience a rough ordeal. Her Nephew manages to rebuff Christian II,regain power, and consolidate it. When Kristina was finally released, he was scared her return would cause a political power struggle so he married her off. This is an impressive statue of Kristina Cylledtierna. So the story goes that after her husband died she took power in Sweden and refused to abdicate until her sons were of age. She stood her ground and the people o...

We all know Maria Theresia, but today I wanted to bring up her husband Franz Stephan. He was big into collecting and he was big into science. He collected rocks, artifacts, gems, Fossils, meteorites, and more. Once he died, One of our professors explained that  Maria wished to open up his collection to the people,  which was an uncommon practice as far as I am aware. The current building was later  established in 1889, My favorite thing was the rock collection! Never before have I seen rocks that are purple and bulbous, or slated and spiky, or even neon green. It was glorious. I also loved the dinosaur section because the room was specifically made for fossils, so the statues circling the room were holding fossils! Finally I thought the collection of Hyoid bones from the human sciences section were mega cool because that relates to my major! At the end of the day, the part that impressed me the most was how vast the whole museum was This huge collection of knowledge is ...