Michael O'Pecko
Professor of German
Towson University

Welcome to my homepage. Let me tell you a few things about my background.  I'm a native of Vandling, Pennsylvania, a little town of about 750 people in the northeastern corner of the state.  I have a BA in German (1969) from the Pennsylvania State University and an MA (1971) and PhD (1976) from the Johns Hopkins University here in Baltimore.  Besides teaching here at Towson University (since 1973!), my interests include foreign language learning (German, of course, as well as Russian and French), reading (I'm a great fan of big, realistic novels), music (both listening to classical music and as an eager, but eternally "beginning" pianist), gardening, newspapers, and recently, to my surprise, Biology!.

Willkommen.  Zuerst, einiges über mich.  Ich wurde in Vandling, Pennsylvanien, einer Kleinstadt von etwa 750 Einwohnern in der nordöstlichen Ecke des Bundesstaates geboren.  Mein Bachelor's degree (1969) ist von der Pennsylvania State University, wo ich Germanistik als Hauptfach studierte, und meinen MA (1971) und meinen Doctor of Philosophy (1976) habe ich an der Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore erworben.  Unter meinen zahlreichen Interessen finden sich meine Lehrveranstaltungen hier an der Towson University (seit 1973!), Fremdsprachen (Deutsch, natürlich, sowie auch Russisch und Französisch), dicke Romane (besonders des 19. Jahrhunderts), Musik (ich höre gern klassische Musik und bin ein ewiger Anfänger am Klavier), mein Garten, Zeitungen,und neulich (zu meinem Erstaunen) Biologie.

 Interessante Links fuer Deutschstudenten!

Radio und Fernsehen im Internet

The first step to listening to radio on the internet, in German or in any other language, is to have a sound card and speakers, but I guess you already knew that.  The next step is to get yourself a free copy of  the Real Audio Player (or, if you're feeling rich, you can buy their pay version).  Then get yourself on over to  Radio-on-the-Internet.com  which is a really good source for European stations that broadcast on the net.  Being a newshound, I particularly like Deutsche Welle and Info-Radio.  You can even find all the German public radio stations, with programs from rock to news to classical music on the ARD website.  The audio quality has gotten much better (if you have a fast internet connection).

You can even watch German TV in good quality video (you'll need a DSL or cable modem).  N-TV, CNN's German partner station is a good source for news, as is the Tagesschau page from Das Erste Programm, Germany's original TV network.  The long-running soap opera Lindenstrasse has half a dozen episodes available to stream on-demand.  If your taste runs more to Homicide and The Wire, try KDD-Kriminaldauerdienst from ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen).  Other programs are available on the Das Erste's and ZDF's website - click on "Interaktiv" for Das Erste and "Mediathek" for ZDF to get the complete selection.

I like to read Munich's Süddeutsche Zeitung because it's probably the best cultural news of any of the papers I know, but the German is very sophisticated and difficult, even for most advanced students.  More approachable is Die Welt from Hamburg, which is both more conservative and simpler to read than the Süddeutsche.  If you're looking for cheap thrills (comics, puzzles, skin, right-wing politics and lots of stories about crime and scandals), try Bild, far and away Germany's biggest mass market newspaper.  A good friend from Vienna points out that Germany isn't the only place of interest for speakers of German, so for news from Austria, try Der Standard and Die Neue Züricher Zeitung for Switzerland.

As for magazines, there are billions (or so it seems to me), from Spiegel and Focus (Germany's answers to TIME and NEWSWEEK - Focus is written in lots easier German) to magazines about music, computers, gays and lesbians, sports, travel, cars, fashion, and yada yada yada - you can find them at Yahoo Deutschland's magazine and newspaper page.

Franz Kafka

If you do, and you need some information on a German writer and it's too hot (or cold or rainy or droughty) to get to the library and your Encarta has never heard of this guy, try the Free University of Berlin's Nützliche Links für Germanisten, and then click on Kurzbiographien.  You'll find all kinds of other things there, too, from dictionaries and encyclopedias to research on women in German.  Speaking of the latter, there is a Women in German website here in the US as well.

We've only scratched the surface of what's available, so I'm just going to give you a few more URLs (is that pronounced with or without an umlaut sound?) to let you find your way around on your own.  Andreas Lixl-Purcell of the University of Carolina at Greensboro has put together a wonderful collection of links at his German Studies Trails on the Web.  Just as good is Colonel Craig's WWW Links for German.

We are fortunate to have an affordable study abroad program at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität in Oldenburg, Germany.  Oldenburg is a lovely, mid-sized city of about 160,000 residents in the north of Germany, about 40 minutes by train from the historic city of Bremen.  The city is clean and safe and offers a more than respectable cultural life, both high-brow and popular.  To see some more pictures of the city, click on the picture of the Schloss or Palace.

Yeah?  You can download them for free from the nice folks at the German Corner, "the first German-American Internet Magazine and Resource Guide in North America."  The font I'm using here is Fraktur, but I also like Schwaben Alt and Gothenburg.  The one under the Kafka picture is more modern and called Bauhaus 93, and I'm not sure where I got it.

Like every other website you've ever seen, this one is still under construction.  If you have any comments, I'd love to hear from you.  E-mail me at Towson University!

 

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