W. Daniel Wilson

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W. Daniel Wilson (born December 3, 1950 in Missouri , USA) is an American professor of German studies at the Royal Holloway, University of London .

Life

Wilson studied at Shimer College (Illinois, USA) and at Cornell University with stays in Berlin and Göttingen . In 1978 he received his Ph.D. from Cornell University with a dissertation on narrative strategy under Christoph Martin Wieland (doctoral supervisor : Eric A. Blackall ). PhD. After stays at the University of Toronto and McGill University in Montreal, he was professor at the University of California at Berkeley from 1983 to 2005 . He caused a sensation with his book Das Goethe-Tabu , published in 1999 , in which he analyzes the political role of Privy Councilor Goethe in Weimar on the basis of extensive archive material from the Thuringian main state archive in Weimar . His previous publication Privy Councilors Against Secret Societies had sparked a scientific controversy. a. in the journal for German philology (ZfdPh). In this investigation, Goethe's activities in the secret society of the Illuminati were examined in detail for the first time on the basis of newly found archive sources in the so-called " Sweden box ".

In 2003 Wilson was elected Vice President of the North American Goethe Society . When he moved to Great Britain in 2006 to teach at the Royal Holloway, University of London, he decided not to take the step to become President. Since 2008 he has been co-editor of the journal Publications of the English Goethe Society .

From 1994 to 1996 Wilson directed the exchange program of the University of California at the University of Göttingen . In 2016 he received the Reimar Lüst Prize for international science and culture mediation from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation .

Publications in German

  • Humanity and the ideology of the crusade around 1780. The “Turkish Opera” in the 18th century and the rescue motif in Wieland's “Oberon”, Lessing's “Nathan” and Goethe's “Iphigenie”. Lang, New York a.] 1984, ISBN 0-8204-0146-3
  • Privy councilors against secret societies. An unknown chapter in the classic-romantic history of Weimar. Metzler, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-476-00778-2
  • Underground tunnels. Goethe, Freemasonry and Politics. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-89244-310-6
  • The Goethe taboo. Protest and human rights in classic Weimar. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-423-30710-2
  • (Ed.): Goethe's Weimar and the French Revolution. Documents from the crisis years. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-412-14203-4
  • Goethe, men, boys. Views on "homosexuality". Insel, Berlin, 2012, ISBN 3-458-17542-3
  • Goethe's Erotica and the Weimar ›Censors‹ . Wehrhahn, Hanover, 2015, ISBN 978-3-86525-451-1
  • The Faustian Pact. Goethe and the Goethe Society in the Third Reich. DTV, Munich, 2018, ISBN 978-3-423-28166-9 ( online )

literature

  • Bastian Schlüter: "I probably love boys too ..." . W. Daniel Wilson opens up extremely interesting insights into Goethe's “Views on 'Homosexuality'” . In: literaturkritik.de . December 19, 2012. Retrieved March 11, 2014.
  • Hartmut Reinhardt: The investigator. The American Goethe critic W. Daniel Wilson. In: Goethe's Critics. Edited by Karl Eibl and Bernd Scheffer. Paderborn 2001, pp. 191-208.
  • Hans Rudolf Vaget: Who's afraid of Daniel Wilson? On the status of the discussion about the political Goethe. In: Monatshefte 98 (2006), pp. 333–348.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The American who touched a German shrine in: Die Welt am June 28, 1999, online , accessed June 24, 2010
  2. ^ Journal for German Philology (ZfdPh). Vol. 111 (1992) - 113 (1994) - Table of Contents. In: mediaevum.de. The old Germanist internet portal. Retrieved March 11, 2014.
  3. ^ Reimar Lüst Prize. April 30, 2012, accessed February 21, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Wilson, W. Daniel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American German studies specialist
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd December 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Missouri , USA