Dr. Hildegard Farke came to Göttingen as a student of English in 1979, and she left the University to go into teacher's training in 1985, after the Department had moved to its new location. Some years later she returned to the Department to work in the Linguistics division as a member of staff. Her insights are from a student's as well as from a staff member's perspective. In the video below she speaks about what the room situation was like before the move, in how far the move made a difference to the Department as a whole, but also about the kinds of topics Linguistis offered then and now.
The video is in German, but below the video you will find a translated transcript.
Click here for an English text version.
Transcript: At the forefront of research: Linguistics, 1984 to today
Interview with Dr. Hildegard Farke, 26 Apr 2019
By way of introduction
My name is Hildegard Farke. I work as an assistant professor in the Linguistics division at the English Department of Göttingen University. My contacts with the English Department go back a long time, and I remember the time between moving house in 1984 and today quite well. Between 1979 and 1985 I was a student at the English Department, but as a student I did not really take any notice of the Department's move.
What was the Linguistics' situation like before 1984?
What I noticed in retrospect is that the room situation for the Linguistics division was fairly cramped, it felt almost temporary. I think the main reason was that when Prof. Gardner, our first Linguistics professor, came in 1970, a new division with new staff members was created, and they could not be housed where the staff of the Literature divisions had their offices. The division was located not in Nikolausberger Weg 15 but in Nikolausberger Weg 7a and 7b, and the rooms allocated to the Linguistics staff members were somewhat remote from the others. The building itself did not have a straightforward layout but plenty of corners and odd turns, and it was difficult to find in the first place. For that reason, there was hardly any direct contact with the other divisions in the Department. The Medieval Studies staff members also had their offices in this building, but it felt like the divisions were scattered through the corridors. We did not feel as one Department. Classes were also taught in different buildings. Both the Verfügungsgebäude and the Zentrales Hörsaalgebäude already existed, so these were used, but we also had classes in Nikolausberger Weg 15 and adjacent buildings.
What was the main research focus of the Linguistics division?
The Linguistics division was opened in 1970. When Prof. Gardner came from Ohio State University he brought with him a focus area relatively unknown to German universities, that of generative grammar. This is still a central point in our teaching and research. When it became clear that the Department would have to move house, hopes were raised that the several divisions would grow together, creating more of a unity.
I went into teacher's training for two years, but I came back in 1987 for another semester's studying because Prof. Gardner had by then implemented a second focus area, computational linguistics, a very modern development in those days. It really felt like starting something new. Prof. Gardner programmed himself, and he also liked to tune hardware.
What kind of conclusion would you draw: what was the result of the move?
So when I came back, the Department had settled into its new rooms. It's not as if everything was perfectly established by then, and some other Departments still had their move into the other buildings of the Altklinikumsbereich before them, but it could be felt quite clearly that the Department was more unified. The Linguistics offices were located on the same floor as the Medieval Studies offices, so there was much more of an exchange of views and of opinions; the Literature divisions were housed one floor down, which deepened and improved communication between the various divisions.
