Daniel Hoffmann (Germanist)

Daniel Hoffmann (born June 11, 1959 in Bielefeld ) is a German literary scholar and writer.

Life

After studying German and philosophy from 1978 to 1986 at the University of Düsseldorf, he received his doctorate with a thesis on Hans Henny Jahnn's novel "Fluß ohne Ufer". From 1987 to 1989 he was a research associate (department “Jewish Philosophy and Spiritual History”) at the University for Jewish Studies in Heidelberg . From 1990 to 1991 he spent a year as a visiting scholar at Brandeis University in Waltham (Massachusetts) . In 1996 he completed his habilitation at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf with a thesis on religion and literature between the world wars. Since 2002 he has been an adjunct professor for modern German literature.

Daniel Hoffmann researches and teaches with a focus on German-Jewish literature, religion and literature in modern times and literature of the 19th century. In addition to his books, he has written over 60 articles, including a. to Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rudolf Kassner, Gertrud Kolmar, Elisabeth Langgässer , Moses ben Maimon and Karl Wolfskehl. In 2007 he published his first literary work. He reconstructed the childhood and youth of his father, who was imprisoned as a German Jew in a concentration camp during the Third Reich . In 2015 his second literary book was published, “Home, you're mine again. Autobiographical Memories of German Judaism ”, in which he deals with the problem of a German-Jewish existence in the shadow of the Shoah . In the autumn semester of 2018 he was visiting professor at the Institute for Jewish-Christian Research IJCF at the University of Lucerne / Switzerland. Since February 2019 he has been a member of the editorial board of the magazine "Kirche und Israel".

Publications

• Reality and the other. On Hans Henny Jahnn's novel “River without a bank”. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1987
• The knowledge on the way to perfection. Miraculous knowledge and knowledge of God in Maimonides' “More Nebuchim”. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1991
• The return of the saint. Literature and religion between the world wars . Schöningh, Paderborn 1998
• Quiet life masters. Serving people at Hermann Lenz. Stauffenburg, Tübingen 1998
• "God given in the new cover". Liturgical poetry in German-Jewish literature of the 20th century. Jewish Publishing House, Berlin 2002
• Fragments of a great tradition. Genre poetic studies on German-Jewish literature. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005
• (Ed.) Handbook on German-Jewish literature of the 20th century. Schöningh, Paderborn 2002
• (Ed.) Gustav Gabriel Cohen. The ideal of one's own state. Two writings from the beginnings of Zionism , ed., Introduced u. commented by Daniel Hoffmann, with a family memory by Hanne Lenz, IBA - Media & Book, Berlin 2003 (translation into Hebrew: Chason hamedina haatzmait, transl. by Irene Carmel, with a foreword and afterword by Gabi Warburg, Pardes Publishing House, Israel 2010 )
• Traces of my father's life. A reconstruction from the Holocaust. Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0149-8
• Luminous ink on brittle paper. A Jewish reading by Adalbert Stifter's Abdias , with an introductory essay by Dieter Borchmeyer on the literary figure of the Jew from Lessing to Stifter. Würzburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-8260-4654-4
• ( Co -ed.) Translation - trans-nation - trans-formation: Translate and Jewish cultures , ed. by Petra Ernst, Hans-Joachim Hahn, Daniel Hoffmann and Dorothea Salzer. Studien-Verlag, Innsbruck 2012
• Home, you are mine again. Autobiographical memories of German Judaism , Würzburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-8260-5840-0
• Religious turmoil. Essays on the literary representation of the religious in the 20th century , Würzburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-8260-6812-6
• "The world is bursting!" An essay on Uriel Birnbaum's sonnet cycle "In Gottes Krieg", Graz 2020, ISBN 978-3-902542-88-5

Web links

• Literature by and about Daniel Hoffmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• CV and list of publications