Liebe, Krankheit, Tod analyzes literary and filmic representations of illness, pandemics, and 
death that have acquired renewed interest recently. The historical focus lies on the late 
nineteenth and early twentieth century, when writers and directors artistically rendered related 
events and experiences such as Germany’s defeat in World War I, economic collapse, political 
upheaval, right-wing radicalization and militarization, growing anti-Semitism and racism, the 
1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic, and fears of modernity, sexuality, and liberation. Considering 
poems, prose texts, visual art, and films we trace historical and cultural developments and 
artistic expansions. The course concludes with a contemporary graphic novel that revisits some 
of these themes in the twenty-first century.