Teaching and Researching Vietnamese German Studies

Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event (2010) and by the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning American novel The Sympathizer (2015). other descriptions include The Boat (2008) by Vietnamese-American Nam Le, and French author Linda Le's novel The three Fates (1997), in which a little girl hides in a foxhole and witnesses the slaughter committed by American troops. Lesser known are two Vietnamese-German authors from former East Germany: The Dung, whose Socialist Realist novel Der Traum von Orly (2016) is about a man who wants to escape the poverty of postwar Vietnam by applying to go to the GDR; and Pham Thi Hoai, an established Hanoi author who came to study at Humboldt University, published on Doi Moi (the 1986 economic reforms), and writes in a style reminiscent of Brecht and Kafka. Historical studies pertaining to the Vietnam War's effect on both Germanies are equally pertinent: I here recommend Richard Wolin's The Wind from the East, a must-read book analyzing the influence of the French student movements' Maoism on the German '68ers' anti-Vietnam War protesters, which adds perspective on the relationship between China and Vietnam-a factor that has shaped European politics and yet remains largely unrecognized.