Herbert Deinert
Herbert Deinert | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 13, 1930 Wiedenbrueck, Germany |
| Died | August 4, 2010 Ithaca, NY, US |
| Education | University of Münster Yale University (Ph.D., 1960) |
| Spouse | Waltraut Deinert |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | German Renaissance 20 century German literature |
| Institutions | Cornell University Duke University University of Georgia |
Herbert Deinert was a Professor Emeritus in the Department of German Studies, Cornell University. He was a noted scholar focusing on German literature and intellectual history since the time of Martin Luther. Deinert served as chair of Cornell's Department of German Studies from 1968-1974.[1] His early work centered on the influence of Rilke on music which was the subject of his Yale dissertation: Rilke und die Musik. He also wrote on barock literature but later focused on the works of Goethe (especially Faust), Hesse, Kafka, Mann, and Brecht.[2] More recently he has helped to understand the influence of Protestantism on Germany directly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Writing on the subject, Deinert said:
Many forces contributed to the collapse of the GDR as a separate state, the final and most visible was the mass exodus via Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The Communist regime resisted change when change was taking place in most of East Germany's neighbors to the east and southeast. But an ever increasing number of increasingly restless citizens insisted on it and, not given a chance to change matters by improving the system, effected the most radical change of all: they swept away an unresponsive, cynical and calcified government. In this process the role of one institution stands out, that of the Protestant Church... [1]
Selected works
[edit]- Rilke und die Musik. Yale University dissertation, 1959. <https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/hd11/Rilke-und-die-Musik.pdf>
- "Der Ackermann aus Böhmen," Journal of English and Germanic Philology 61:2 (Apr, 1962): 205-216. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/27714004>
- "Franz Kafka - Ein Hungerkünstler." Wirkendes Wort Heft 2, Jahrgang 13 (Apr, 1963), Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann, Düsseldorf. <https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/hd11/Hungerkuenstler.html>
- "Die Entfaltung des Bösen in Böhmes Mysterium Magnum," PMLA 79:4 (Sept, 1964): 401-410. <https://doi.org/10.2307/460745>
- "Kafka's Parable Before the Law," The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, 39:3 (1964): 192-200. <https://doi.org/10.1080/19306962.1964.11787181>
- "The Protestant Revolution, or: Wider die Falsche Gelassenheit." Dimensions. A. Leslie Willson & Contemporary German Arts and Letters, Peter Pabisch & Ingo R. Stoehr (eds.). Krefeld: Verlag van Acken, 1993. <https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/hd11/ProtestantRevol.html>
- "Germans Against Hitler." The Ithaca Journal, August 26, 1994. <https://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/opus4/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/13842/file/http_courses.cit.cornell.edu_hd11_GermansAgainstHitler.pdf>
- (Co-author): "Colonialism and the Postcolonial Condition," [subsection on Faust the colonizer] PMLA 110:5 (Oct, 1995): 1047-1052. <https://doi.org/10.2307/463029>
External links
[edit]- ^ "Herbert Deinert, professor emeritus of German studies, dies". Cornell Chronicle. Retrieved June 12, 2025.
- ^ Nollendorfs, Valters (ed.), DAAD / Monatshefte Directory of German Studies. Ann Arbor, 1990, p. 199.