Oskar Seidlin

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Oskar Seidlin , maiden name Oskar Koplowitz , pseudonym Stefan Brockhoff (born February 17, 1911 in Königshütte , Upper Silesia ; died December 11, 1984 in Bloomington , Indiana ), was a German-American Germanist, children's book and crime writer.

Life

Seidlin came from a Jewish family and grew up in Upper Silesia. He studied literature and philosophy in Freiburg im Breisgau , Frankfurt am Main (including as a listener to one of Theodor W. Adorno's first lectures ) and Berlin. In 1933 he emigrated to Switzerland , where he kept his head above water as a freelancer for various magazines. In 1936 he received his doctorate under Franz Zinkernagel and Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer at the University of Basel with a thesis on Otto Brahm .

In 1938 Seidlin left Switzerland and emigrated to the United States to take up a visiting professorship at Smith College for Women in Northampton, Massachusetts . He gave up this position in 1942 to serve as a native German speaker in the US Army Intelligence Division . As a result, he was involved in the first stages of the invasion of Europe. In 1946 he quit military service.

While teaching at Middlebury College in Vermont , Seidlin made the acquaintance of Bernhard Blume (1901–1978), the chairman of the German Department of Ohio State University (in Columbus, Ohio ), himself an emigrant from National Socialist Germany. Blume offered him a position at his institute, and here Seidlin taught from 1946 as a professor of German language and literature. The emigrated Germanist Dieter Cunz (1910–1969), who became Seidlin's life partner, also taught at Ohio State University . In 1972 Seidlin accepted a call to Indiana University (in Bloomington, Indiana ), where he taught as a professor for German studies until his retirement in May 1979. In 1973 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

Seidlin was two-time Guggenheim scholarship winners , in 1962 and 1976. In 1968 the German Academy for Language and Poetry honored Seidlin with the Friedrich Gundolf Prize for conveying German culture abroad. He also served on an advisory board for Princeton University for several semesters .

Under the common pseudonym Stefan Brockhoff , various detective stories and detective novels are ascribed to him together with the two American German scholars Dieter Cunz and Richard Plant .

Publications

  • Otto Brahm as a theater critic: With consideration of his literary-historical work . N. Niehans, Zurich and Leipzig 1936 (= Basel contributions to German literary and intellectual history 3; also dissertation, University of Basel). Second edition appeared as Der Theaterkritiker Otto Brahm . Bouvier, Bonn 1978, ISBN 341601328X (= studies on modern literature 6).
  • Pedronis needs to be helped: a story for the youth . With illustrations by Felix Hoffmann . Sauerländer, Aarau 1937. The abridged version was published as Der goldene Apfel . FS Crofts & Co., New York 1942, as well as Waldwyl and the theater people . Sauerländer, 1969. An English translation provided by Senta Jonas Rypins appeared as: Green Wagons . Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1943.
  • My picture book: poems . Oprecht, Zurich 1938.
  • (with Richard Plant): SOS With drawings by William Pène du Bois. Viking, New York 1939. Released as SOS Geneva: A Peace Book for Children . With illustrations by Susel Bischoff. Humanitas, Zurich 1940.
  • Helena: From myth to person. Attempt to reinterpret the Helena act, Faust II . In: PMLA 62: 1, 1947, pp. 183-212.
  • (with Werner P. Friederich and Philip A. Shelley): An Outline-History of German Literature . Barnes & Noble, New York 1948.
  • (Ed.): The correspondence between Schnitzler and Brahm . Writings of the Society for Theater History, Berlin 1953. Second, expanded edition: Niemeyer, Tübingen 1975, ISBN 3484190345 .
  • Essays in German and Comparative Literature . University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1961.
  • From Goethe to Thomas Mann: 12 attempts . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1963. Second, revised edition: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1969.
  • Experiments via Eichendorff . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965. 3rd, unchanged edition 1985, ISBN 3525207239 .
  • Classic and modern classics: Goethe, Brentano, Eichendorff, Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972, ISBN 3525333226 .
  • Of awakening consciousness and the fall of man: Brentano, Schiller, Kleist, Goethe . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3129369104 .
  • “Pray for me, my dear ...” Oldenburg, Igel-Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3896211218 (correspondence with the Germanist William Henry Rey from the period 1947 to 1984).

Secondary literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 223.
  2. ↑ See Stefan Brockhoff, Shot on the Stage (Leipzig, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1935); ders., Musik im Totengässlein (Bern, Goldmann, 1936); ders., Drei Kiosks am See (Leipzig, Goldmann, 1937); another, meeting in Zermatt (Munich, Goldmann, 1955). Another story, titled 'Confusion about Veronika', was allegedly first published as a series in the Zürcher Illustrierte in 1938 . Cf. Angelika Jockers and Reinhard Jahn, eds., Lexicon of German-speaking crime fiction authors (2nd edition; Munich, Verlag der Criminale, 2005). See also Paul Ott: Murder in the Alpenglow. The Swiss detective novel - past and present (Wuppertal 2005), ISBN 3935421141 .
personal data
SURNAME Seidlin, Oskar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Koplowitz, Oskar (maiden name); Brockhoff, Stefan (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American German studies specialist, children's book and crime writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigshütte
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1984
Place of death Bloomington (Indiana)