Quality and Innovation- Our faculty consistently receive excellent evaluations, and have received teaching awards, including the system-wide Francis Davis Award for Undergraduate Teaching.
- We regularly offer courses that fulfill focus W (writing intensive), O (oral communication) and H (Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Issues) focus designations.
Importance of German in the World Today
- Germany is the largest economy in the European Union and the fourth largest economy in the world—after the US, China and Japan.
- German is the 10th most widely spoken language in the world: spoken by over 100 million people worldwide.
- Today, 10% of all books published world-wide are in the German language.
- And over 150,000 German speakers visit Hawai‘i each year.
Strategic Mission: Centrality and Alignment
You may be surprised to learn that German is a Heritage Language:
- German was one of just two foreign languages offered when the University of Hawai’i was established in 1908. The first classes were held in the house of a German merchant, Wilhelm Ludwig Maertens, on Thomas Square.
- German has been an important language in the islands since the early 1800s, when German explorers and businessmen began to arrive. German-speaking immigrants served as cabinet ministers, officers in the army and diplomats.
- The German presence and influence was so strong in the 19th-century that King Kalakaua often appeared in the uniform of a German cavalry general. Princess Ka‘iulani was sent to Germany to perfect her German, and Queen Lili‘uokalani took German lessons in I‘olani Palace.
- Over a thousand German sugar plantation workers arrived in the islands in the early 1880s, not long after the Chinese, and just before the Japanese. Intermarriages were common. In O‘ahu cemetery, the gravestones are carved in three languages: English, Hawaiian and German.
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