[vague] It is roughly divided as follows: In addition, the discipline examines German under various aspects: the way it is spoken and written, i.e., spelling; declination; vocabulary; sentence structure; texts; etc.
The field systematically examines German literature in terms of genre, form, content, and motifs as well as looking at it historically by author and epoch.
Their courses usually cover four fields:[1] Several universities offer specialized curricula for school teachers, usually called "Deutsch (Lehramt)".
As an independent university subject, German studies was introduced at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Georg Friedrich Benecke, the Brothers Grimm, and Karl Lachmann.
The Nazi period, and immediate predecessor periods before and after World War I, left large parts of the field, which had drifted off more and more into race-biological thinking, greatly compromised and damaged, as major proponents on both the literature (e.g. Prof. Josef Nadler in Vienna) and the linguistics side (e.g. Prof. Eberhard Kranzmayer in Graz) were actively working for the Nazi Party (Kranzmayer, Höfler) and their racist goals (Nadler)[2] While great efforts have been made in the denazification of the field, some biases are suggested by overseas Germanist to have remained.