Stephen D. Dowden & Meike G. Werner 
German Literature, Jewish Critics 
The Brandeis Symposium

Proceedings of the Brandeis conference on Jewish Germanists who fled Nazi Germany and their impact on Anglo-American German studies.


Among the Jewish academics and intellectuals expelled from Germany and Austria during the Nazi era were many specialists in German literature. Strangely, their impact on the practice of
Germanistik in the United States, England, and Canada has been given little attention. Who were they? Did their vision of German literature and culture differ significantly from that of those who remained in their former homeland? What problems did they face in the American and British academic settings? Above all, how did they help shape German studies in the postwar era? This unique and important symposium, which convened at Brandeis University under the auspices of its Center for Germanand European Studies, addresses these and many other questions. Among its distinguished participants–who numbered over thirty in all–are Peter Demetz (Yale, emeritus), Gesa Dane (Göttingen), Amir Eshel (Stanford), Willi Goetschel (Toronto), Barbara Hahn (Princeton), Susanne Klingenstein (MIT), Christoph König (Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach), Ritchie Robertson (Oxford), Egon Schwarz (Washington University St. Louis, emeritus), Hinrich Seeba (UC Berkeley), Walter Sokel (University of Virginia, emeritus), Frank Trommler (University of Pennsylvania), and many more. The volume includes not only the (revised) essays of the participants but also their prepared responses, transcripts of the panel discussion, and dialogue of the participants with members of the audience.


Stephen D. Dowden is professor of German at Brandeis University; Meike G. Werner is assistant professor of German at Vanderbilt University.

Tabla de materias

Academic Emigration and Intercultural Criticism: On the Role of Jewish Critics in Exile – Hinrich C. Seeba

Reminiscences of a UFO – Egon Schwarz

Aufklärungskulturgeschichte: Bemerkungen zu Judentum, Philologie und Goethe bei Ludwig Geiger – Christoph Koenig

Vom wahren Weg: Eine Respondenz – Amir Eshel

Trümmer im Gepäck: Margarete Susman, Bertha Badt-Strauss und Hannah Arendt in der Emigration – Barbara Hahn

Eine Klassikerin der Literaturtheorie: Käte Hamburger – Gesa Dane

A Jewish Critic from Germany: Hermann Levin Goldschmidt – Willi Goetschel

Response to Willi Goetschel – Thomas Sparr

Part of an Intellectual Autobiography – Walter H. Sokel

Response to Walter Sokel – Marc A. Weiner

An Appreciation of the Work of J.P. Stern, Siegbert Prawer, and George Steiner – Ritchie Robertson

Jewish Critics and German Literature in the Public Sphere: A Response to Ritchie Robertson – David Suchoff

Sobre el autor

MEIKE G. WERNER is Associate Professor of German and European Studies at Vanderbilt University and President of the American Friends of the German Literature Archive in Marbach A.N.