Robert Kahn (Germanist)

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Robert Ludwig Kahn (born April 22, 1923 in Nuremberg ; died March 22, 1970 in Round Top , Texas ) was a German-American poet and Germanist .

Life

Kahn was the son of a Jewish merchant. He attended school in Nuremberg and Leipzig and from 1934 to the Carlebach School in Leipzig . In 1939 he had to leave Germany. His father was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1936 and died soon after returning from there. His mother was able to send the 16-year-old to England, where he briefly attended Kendra Hall School in Croydon and Westham Municipal College in London . When the financial means were no longer sufficient, however, Kahn worked in a tannery. Soon after the outbreak of World War II, Kahn, like many other Jewish emigrants, was interned on the Isle of Man as an “enemy alien” and deported to Canada in 1940.

After his release from internment, he studied at Dalhousie University in Halifax , where he received his BA in 1944 and an MA in philosophy and history in 1945. From 1945 to 1948 he continued his studies at the University of Toronto , where he received his doctorate in 1949 with a thesis on August von Kotzebue . From 1948 to 1961 he taught German at the University of Washington in Seattle . After a stay in Marbach am Neckar , financed by a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation , he accepted a call to Rice University in Houston in 1962 , where he became head of foreign language studies in 1963 and head of the German studies department until his death in 1964. Heavily burdened by the effects of the 1968 student unrest on campus, he committed suicide in 1970.

He was married to the lyricist and Germanist Lisa Kahn , who published his narrow lyric work ( Tonlose Lieder ) posthumously. A center of his poetry was the confrontation with Nuremberg - both the city of his childhood and origin and the " city ​​of the Nazi party rallies ": partly in satirical and elegiac form, partly with recourse to archaic forms of language. His Nuremberg cycle was broadcast by Saarland Radio in 1968 .

As a Germanist, Kahn mainly dealt with Romanticism and was the editor of Georg Forster's works.

Works

  • Kotzebue, his social and political attitudes. The dilemma of a popular dramatist in times of social change. Dissertation Toronto 1949.
  • Soundless songs. Poems. Bläschke, Darmstadt 1978, ISBN 3-87561-699-5 .
  • Soundless songs. Partial reprint of the first edition with an afterword by Käte Hamburger . Edited by Helmut Kreuzer. Univ.-Overall Hochsch. Siegen, Siegen 1986.

literature

  • Hans Eichner: In memoriam Robert L. Kahn. In: Hans Eichler, Lisa Kahn (eds.): Studies in German in memory of Robert L. Kahn. William Marsh Rice University, Houston 1971, pp. Iii – v ( PDF ).
  • Ingrid Kreuzer: Kahn, Robert. In: Walther Killy (Ed.): Literaturlexikon . Bertelsmann-Lexikon-Verlag, Gütersloh & Munich 1990, vol. 6, p. 188 f.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kahn, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kahn, Robert Ludwig (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American poet and Germanist
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH March 22, 1970
Place of death Round Top , Texas