Klaus Hermsdorf

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Klaus Hermsdorf (born June 16, 1929 in Camburg ; † March 16, 2006 in Berlin ) was a German specialist in German . He is considered the most important Kafka researcher in the GDR .

Life

Hermsdorf passed his Abitur in Gera in 1947 and worked as a press officer at the Gera City Council in 1948/1949, after which he was assistant editor for the Thuringian newspaper in Weimar in 1949/1950 . From 1950 to 1954 he studied German, art history and theater studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin. The state examination thesis on the "concept of work in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren" took place with Leopold Magon . After 1954 Hermsdorf became a research assistant to Alfred Kantorowicz , who fled to West Berlin in 1957 . In the winter semester of 1959, Hermsdorf got a senior assistant position at the German Institute of the Humboldt University in Berlin, and he earned his doctorate with a doctorate on " Franz Kafka's fragment of the novel" Der Verschollene (America) "".

From 1961 to 1964 Hermsdorf was lecturer for German at the Charles University in Prague , in 1963 he took part in the Kafka Conference in Liblice . In 1964 he returned to the German Institute of Humboldt University as a research assistant, where he took over the management of the Department of Latest German Literature . In 1967 he completed his habilitation on the subject of “ Thomas Mann's Schelme. Investigations into the development of a figure type ”. From 1968 to 1974 Hermsdorf was a lecturer in German literary history at the German Institute and the Philology / German Studies section of the Humboldt University that was later formed from it . At the same time he also became a lecturer at the University of Warsaw (Uniwersytet Warszawski) and held this professorial position until 1973. In 1974 Hermsdorf was appointed full professor for German literary history at the Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald . After five years, he was appointed to the German Studies Section at Humboldt University, where he stayed until his retirement in 1994.

Despite advanced visual disorders, Hermsdorf still worked in old age on a specially made computer with speech function. In 2006 the autobiography of Klaus Hermsdorf was published posthumously by the Theater der Zeit publishing house .

Works

  • Kafka in the GDR: Memories of a Participant , edited by Gerhard Schneider and Frank Hörnigk. [Theater of the time. Joint project with the Literature Forum in the Brecht House Berlin]. Berlin, Theater der Zeit, 2006, ISBN 978-3-934344-93-8
  • (with Hugo Fetting and Silvia Schlenstedt ) Exile in the Netherlands and Spain . Reclam, Leipzig 1981 [FRG licensed edition: Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-87682-482-6 ]
  • Official writings - critical edition , edited by Klaus Hermsdorf + Benno Wagner. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt, 2004, ISBN 978-3-10-038183-5
  • Kafka. Worldview and novel . Rütten & Loening, Berlin, 1961.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hermsdorf, Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Germanist and university lecturer
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Camburg
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 2006
Place of death Berlin