After the dissolution of the Department of Ancient and Modern Languages in 1901, and the later creation of the Department of Romance Languages in 1915 which excluded German, the Department of German was left adrift for many years.
It was not until 1960, when the program in Russian was removed from the Department of Romance Languages and combined with German that it had another language grouped with it. German remained the core of a sort of “Mischmasch” grouping, with the department later being combined with programs in Japanese (1996) and Chinese (2005) alongside Russian.
In 2011, the Department of German, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese Studies merged with the Department of Romance Languages to make the Department of Languages, Literature, and Cultures.
Department Heads:
[as the Department of German]:
Philander P. Claxton – 1894
Bertha Marvin Lee – 1895 – 1912
Christine Reincken 1913 – 1918
Caroline P. Schoch 1919 – 1948
William Robert Barrett 1949 – 1954
Ernst Breisacher 1955 – 1959
[as the Department of German and Russian]
Annie F. Baecker 1960 – 1980
Robert P. Newton 1981 – 1991
Joachim T. Baer 1992 – 1995
[as the Department of German and Russian including Japanese Studies]
Joachim T. Baer 1996 – 1998
Andreas Lixl 1999 – 2005
[as the Department of German, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese Studies]
Andreas Lixl 2006 – 2011