Spaethling Returns to German Dept. To Become Coordinator of Courses

Robert H. Spaethling will return to Harvard next fall to become associate professor of German, and coordinator of German language courses. Jack M. Stein, chairman of the German Department said Monday.

After last year, Spaethling left Harvard to become chairman of the German and Russian Languages Department at Williams College.

Spaethling will assume personal control of German Ca. Stein said. The department hopes to reorganize the course and end the annual set of student complaints about it. Each year the coordinator takes charge of one language course. Stein said that German C is the only one which repeatedly disappoints students.

Stein became chairman of the department this year, and at the present time is also the coordinator of language courses. He has had little time to devote to the latter job, he said.

After next year, Spaethling will teach German Philology 280. All graduate student's in the department who want to become teaching fellows must take this course.

Spaethling's specialty is German literature of the 19th and 20th centuries last spring he taught a course on Bertolt Brecht, and he will teach a course on Brecht, Kafka, and Junger in this year's summer school.

He will also teach the spring term of German 75, replacing Bernhard Blume, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture. Blume is retiring after this year.

Something is a native of Germany. He moved to the United States in 1952 and joined the Harvard Faculty in 1959.