Guy star

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Guy Stern, 2017

Guy Stern , born as Günther Stern (born January 14, 1922 in Hildesheim ) is a German-American literary scholar .

Life

Grew up in Hildesheim as Günther Stern in an assimilated Jewish family, he emigrated to the USA in 1937 with the help of an uncle from St. Louis and the American consul in Hamburg as the only member of his family of five. Even later he was unable to make up for it. After the end of the war, he learned that his entire family had been deported and perished in the Warsaw ghetto .

From 1940 onwards, Stern studied Romance studies and later German studies . In 1942 he volunteered for military service, but was only drafted later. In the "Military Intelligence Training Center" in Camp Ritchie , Maryland, he received special training and thus became one of the so-called Ritchie Boys , a unit of the military intelligence service made up mainly of emigrants. In 1944 he landed in Normandy three days after the start of the invasion . He was used in the IPW (Interrogators of Prisoners of War) Team 37, it consisted of six people and interrogated German prisoners of war and defectors until the end of the war. He received the Bronze Star Medal for his work .

After the war he resumed his studies, doing his BA in Romance Studies in 1948 , an MA in German Studies in 1950 , and his doctorate in 1953 . After teaching at Columbia University New York City, he became Professor and Head of Department for German Language and Literature at the University of Cincinnati in 1963 , then University Dean, from 1975 at the University of Maryland . In 1978 he was appointed to Wayne State University in Detroit , where he was Distinguished Professor of German Literature and Cultural History from 1981 . Guest professorships took him to the Universities of Freiburg im Breisgau , Frankfurt am Main (1993), Leipzig (1997), Potsdam (1998) and Munich as Mercator Professor.

He is the director of an institute of the Holocaust Museum in Detroit and one of the co-founders of the Lessing Society , of which he was president from 1975 to 1977. As an author and editor, he has published numerous books and compilations on German literary history, particularly on emigrant and immigrant literature. In 1988, at the unveiling of the memorial at the former site of the destroyed Hildesheim synagogue on Lappenberg , he contributed to a speech. In 1998 he gave a lecture in the Bundestag in Bonn on the sixtieth anniversary of the Reichspogromnacht .

Stern received numerous awards, including the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1987) and the Goethe Medal (1989). At the presentation of a festschrift for Stern in 2005, the then Bavarian Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs, Monika Hohlmeier , emphasized in her laudation the educational character of his life's work and journey, in which Stern was particularly committed to strengthening the spiritual foundations of freedom in Germany: “You themselves ”, said Hohlmeier,“ represent a figure of identification for learners: their life path gives others orientation, your lived vita draws a trace that can be a path for others. ”

Stern is married to the German writer Susanna Piontek.

On March 5, 2012, he was granted honorary citizenship of his native Hildesheim and in 2017 Stern was awarded the first-ever OVID Prize from the PEN Center for German-Language Authors Abroad .

Works

  • War, Weimar and literature. The Story of the Neue Merkur, 1914-1925 (= The Penn State Series in German literature ). Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 1971, DNB 578599805 .
  • Literature in exile. Collected essays 1959–1989 . Ismaning 1989.
  • Literary culture in exile. Collected contributions to exile research (1989–1997) / Literature and Culture in Exile (= Philologica , Series A, Volume 1). Dresden University Press, Dresden 1998, ISBN 3-931828-05-0 (partly German and partly English).
  • Fielding, Wieland, Goethe and the Rise of the Novel (= Analyzes and Documents , Volume 49). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2003 (Dissertation Columbia University New York (English)).
  • Arno Reinfrank : poet from the Palatinate in exile - author of the “Poetry of Facts” (1934–2001) (= Jewish miniatures , volume 84). Edited by Jeanette Koch with the collaboration of Maik Hamburger . New Synagogue Foundation Berlin , Centrum Judaicum. Verlag Hentrich & Hentrich , Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-941450-02-8 .

literature

  • Konrad Feilchenfeldt , Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Hrsg.): Autobiographical evidence of persecution. Tribute to Guy Stern . Synchron, Scientific publishing house of the authors, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-935025-50-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joshua Franklin: Victim Soldiers. German-Jewish Refugees in the American Armed Forces during World War II. ( Memento of the original dated September 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Page 28 (p. 34 of the PDF) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.clarku.edu
  2. ↑ Guy Stern: Speech of November 9, 1998 on the occasion of the event "When the Synagogues Burned"
  3. ↑ Guy Stern's article on www.ritchieboys.com
  4. ↑ Archive link ( memento of the original from January 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.centrumjudaicum.de
  5. ↑ Werner Karg: Festschrift for Guy Stern . In: Insights and Perspectives 01/2005 (Weblink)
  6. ^ City of Hildesheim: Guy Stern, biography . Retrieved April 10, 2015
  7. ↑ Guy Stern receives the Ovid Prize awarded for the first time , buchmarkt.de, March 14, 2017, accessed on March 15, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Stern, guy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stern, Günther (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American literary scholar
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Hildesheim