German literature center celebrates its 25th anniversary

Max Kade Center helps keep contemporary German literature 'alive and well,' director says

The Max Kade Center on Contemporary German Literature will celebrate its 25th anniversary by hosting the 20th St. Louis Symposium on German Literature, “The Ethics of Literature: Contemporary German Writers,” Friday through Sunday, March 26-28, in Room 276 of the Danforth University Center.

Lützeler chats in his office with former student Kamaal Haque.

The symposium is organized by Paul Michael Lützeler, PhD, the Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities and professor of German and of comparative literature in Arts & Sciences, and Jennifer Kapczynski, PhD, assistant professor of German.

Gerald L. Early, PhD, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters and director of the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences, will open the symposium with a lecture on “The Ethics of Literature,” followed by Dutch intellectual and author Rob Riemen speaking on “The Ethics of Greatness.”

Lützeler has invited eight writers and critics from German-speaking countries and eight scholars from the United States and Europe to discuss questions regarding contemporary German literature.

Founded in 1985 by Lützeler, the Max Kade Center promotes teaching and research of modern German literature and supports cooperation among American students and scholars and German, Austrian and Swiss writers, critics, scholars and students in this field.

The center is supported by the Max Kade Foundation in New York and several foundations from the German-speaking countries.

“Contemporary German literature is alive and well,” Lützeler says. “Writers like Christa Wolf, Jurek Becker, Patrick Sueskind, Bernhard Schlink and Daniel Kehlmann have written best sellers that are being read all over the world. During the last five decades some six Nobel Prize winners in the field of literature came from the German speaking countries.

“A center for contemporary German literature was overdue when I founded it in 1985,” he says. “It is a pleasure to run it. It serves the profession and it puts our German department on the map.”

Lützeler was assisted at the time by colleagues Egon Schwarz, PhD, the Rosa May Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Humanities; James E. McLeod, vice chancellor for students and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences; and James F. Poag, PhD, professor emeritus of Germanic languages and literatures. In cooperation with Olin Library, Lützeler began to build the special collection of contemporary German literature.

The collection was an extension of the Suhrkamp/Insel Collection donated to the university in 1980 by Siegfried Unseld, head of the Suhrkamp/Insel publishing companies in Frankfurt, Germany.

Since 1985, most of the literary publishing companies of the German-speaking countries have donated books to the Contemporary German Literature collection. It is the largest collection of its kind on the American continent.

As part of the Max Kade Center’s activities, Lützeler invites leading writers and critics from German-speaking countries each year to teach a graduate seminar on contemporary German literature.

He also organizes weekend seminars for students and young professors of German every other year in St. Louis or in the German Literary Archives in Marbach, Germany. He annually grants three summer stipends to American doctoral candidates and junior colleagues to do research in the center’s collection.

He is editor-in-chief of the yearbook Gegenwartsliteratur, the only scholarly periodical in the field of contemporary German literature.

In addition to the symposium, an exhibit on the history of the Max Kade Center and its activities is on display until Wednesday, March 31, in the Ginko Room of Olin Library.

For more information, e-mail jjodell@wustl.edu or visit artsci.wustl.edu/~gersymp/sym2010/main2010.html.