2025-26 Fulbright Teaching Assistant in German

Roger Williams Hall, Room 228
lsoukup@bates.edu

Hallihallo und Willkommen,

My name is Lorenz and I am from Vienna, the capital of Austria. The small country in the heart of Europe. Perhaps best known for The Sound of Music, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mozart. I recently graduated from the University of Vienna with a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, focusing on contemporary and applied philosophy. Alongside my studies, I worked as a tutor for an NGO, helping children with migration backgrounds learn German and navigate the Austrian school system.

Growing up in the capital certainly shaped my picture of what “Austria” means. But because my parents are both from outside the city, my childhood was filled with travels around the country. Through this, I experienced a duality of traditional Austrian culture and a more modern perspective on Austria’s social and political landscape that I aim to bring into the classroom and to you.

My own fascination for languages was sparked at thirteen preparing a play in English class. Somewhere between the lines of the script, I fell in love with the language. In admiration of the different Anglophone cultures, I would go on to spend the next summer reading an English-German dictionary like a novel from A to Z. Later, this fascination motivated me to go abroad for an exchange semester in Canada, coincidentally right across the border from Bates College in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where I would often find myself on the coastline looking out to the sea. Life has funny ways. Not a decade later, I find myself on the other side sharing the fascination for my own language.

Anyhow, I hope my little self-reflection gives away that I may not be the typical language assistant with a degree in language studies or education studies, and so I hope you will find my approach a bit different to what you would normally expect. My goal is to bring the ‘a bit of everything’ mentality into the German classes, to show German in its full diversity as a “jack-of-all-trades.” I myself love sewing, crafting, written and spoken word, and all things creative. That is why, as this year’s teaching assistant, I look forward to bringing the German language and Austrian culture to Bates College inside and outside the classroom: on a plate, through the ear, and as a DIY project, every piece adding to the puzzle that makes up Austria.

I look forward to presenting to you the multicultural Austria that I know and, with you together, going beyond and exploring the many other corners of Austrian culture.

I can’t wait to waltz through the semester together!

Liebe Grüße,
Lorenz