Prof. Bernhard Blume

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Blume_(writer)

German American Philologist, Playwright, Author and Professor of German Literature

A native of Germany and a widely performed playwright during the Weimar Republic, he and Carola were forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1936 because of "non-Aryan kin-ship" as the Nazis euphemistically designated it. Turning to the academic profession, he taught at Mills College and Ohio State University before accepting the Kuno Francke chair of German Art and Culture at Harvard University in 1956, the most prestigious position in Germanic studies in America. Twice a Guggenheim fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German Academy, and holder of the Goethe Medal from the West German government, Blume enjoyed an inter-national reputation for books and articles on the entire scope of German literature and culture from Goethe to the present. Particularly noteworthy are his writings on Thomas Mann, Rilke, and Brecht. At hi~ death, several leading newspapers in Switzerland and West Germany called him the "grand seigneur" of Germanistic studies. Unpretentious, warm, devoted to his students, and unselfish in his commitment to teaching, he took greater pride in his introductory textbook on the study of German literature than almost all his more "scholarly" writings. Private funeral services were held on July 25, but a public memorial service is scheduled for October 27 at J PM in the reception room behind the Mandeville Auditorium. Dorothy Lyon