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Oskar Seidlin

Oskar Seidlin (February 17, 1911 – December 11, 1984) was a Jewish emigre from Nazi Germany first to Switzerland and then to the U.S. He taught German language and literature as a professor at Smith College, Middlebury College, Ohio State University, and Indiana University from 1939 to 1979. He authored a number of fictional and non-fictional works.

Oskar Seidlin
Born
Salo Oskar Koplowitz

(1911-02-17)February 17, 1911
DiedDecember 11, 1984(1984-12-11) (aged 73)
Resting placeWalnut Grove Cemetery, Worthington, Ohio
NationalityGerman, U.S. as of 1943
Alma materUniversity of Basel
Occupation(s)Professor of German, author
Years active1939–1979
Partner(s)Dieter Cunz
Hans Høgel
AwardsGoethe Medal in Gold (1963)
Friedrich Gundolf Prize (1976)
Georg Dehio Prize (1983)
External image
Portrait photograph of Oskar Seidlin as a Guggenheim Fellow, c. 1976.

Early years and education edit

He was born Salo Oskar Koplowitz to Johanna (1885–1943?) and Heinrich Koplowitz (1872–1938), a lumber dealer in Königshütte in the Upper Silesia Basin of Germany (now Chorzów in southwestern Poland) who served for many years as a city council alderman and was an active Zionist and member of the Jewish community.[1] After completing secondary schooling at the humanities-focused Realgymnasium in Beuthen (now Bytom) in 1929, he enrolled for one semester at the University of Freiburg and then transferred to the recently founded University of Frankfurt, which enjoyed a reputation as Germany's most progressive university and also had the highest percentage of Jewish students and professors. Here he was joined by his sister Ruth, five years his senior, and attended courses on German literature (taught by Wolfgang Pfeiffer-Belli, Julius Schwietering, Franz Schultz, Max Herrmann), French literature, philosophy (Paul Tillich), and history. He also audited courses in sociology (Theodor Adorno, Norbert Elias, Karl Mannheim). In a seminar on baroque literature taught by Martin Sommerfeld,[2] he made the acquaintance of the gay Jewish student Richard Plaut, beginning a friendship they maintained when they later emigrated to Switzerland and the U.S. In the fall of 1930, he transferred with Plaut for one semester to the University of Berlin, where they became acquainted with the Kattowitz editor Franz Goldstein and through him with Klaus Mann, both of whom were infatuated with Koplowitz. Upon returning to Frankfurt in 1931, he met the history student Dieter Cunz, who became his lifetime partner. He also met the students Wilhelm Rey (1911–2007) and Wilhelm Emrich (1909–1998) who became lifelong friends and eventually colleagues, despite their later accommodation with the Nazi regime; Rey served in the Wehrmacht,[3] and Emrich authored a doctrinaire anti-Semitic essay in 1943. In the closing years of the Weimar Republic, Koplowitz, Cunz, Plaut, Rey, and Emrich sympathized with Frankfurt's leftist student political group that was increasingly on the defensive when the growing Nazi Students League felt emboldened to disrupt courses taught by Jewish professors, including Sommerfeld. Koplowitz's primary interest was theater directing, and in 1932 he mounted a production of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera with student friends.

Studies in Switzerland edit

In February 1933, following Hitler's rise to power, Plaut left Germany for Switzerland, where he was joined in April by Koplowitz. They initially regarded the move as a temporary transfer, not a permanent emigration, and expected to return to Frankfurt once the Nazis had been turned out of office. While Plaut and Koplowitz enrolled at the University of Basel in 1933, Cunz, a gentile, remained in Frankfurt but after completing his Ph.D. in 1934 also relocated to Switzerland. Hard pressed financially and constrained in employment by their Swiss student visas, Koplowitz and Plaut relied on writing under pseudonyms as their primary source of income. Together with Cunz, they coauthored three detective novels under the collective pen name Stefan Brockhoff that were published in Nazi Germany.[4] Contemporaries of Friedrich Glauser, Koplowitz et al. are recognized as pioneers of the Swiss crime story genre (distinguished by setting and the occasional use of Helvetisms).[5]

In 1936, Koplowitz completed a Ph.D. with a summa cum laude dissertation on the Naturalistic theater work of the leftist German Jewish director Otto Brahm, written under the supervision first of Franz Zinkernagel, who died in 1935, and then Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer. He then relocated with Cunz to Lausanne, where he pursued postgraduate studies in French language and literature. One year later Plaut also finished his doctorate. Since their student visas were no longer extended following the completion of the Ph.D., Plaut and Koplowitz were under increasing pressure to leave Switzerland. In 1937, Koplowitz used the pen name Oskar Seidlin (possibly devised because of its similarity both to his mother's maiden name, Seidler, and to Hölderlin) for his young readers' tale Pedronis muss geholfen werden![6] A collection of his poems entitled Mein Bilderbuch was published under the same nom de plume in 1938.[7] Together with Plaut, Koplowitz and Cunz decided to emigrate to the U.S.

Emigration to the U.S. edit

In 1938, the three left Switzerland for New York, where within a year their paths diverged. Koplowitz worked briefly as a dishwasher before finding employment as an amanuensis for the emigres Thomas Mann and Erika Mann. In 1939, he obtained a lecturership in German language and literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he advanced to an assistant professorship in 1941.[8] Cunz was awarded a grant to conduct historical research in Maryland, and in 1939 he received a teaching appointment at the University of Maryland, where he rose through the ranks and long chaired the Department of German. Plaut remained in New York City, where he officially changed his name to Plant and worked for the emigre Klaus Mann. Koplowitz would officially change his name to Seidlin in 1943, when he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen. With Plant, he coauthored S.O.S. Geneva, a young readers' book with a cosmopolitan and pacifistic theme that was published in English in October 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II. Under the title Der goldene Apfel, an abridged and annotated version of Seidlin's Pedronis muss geholfen werden! was published in 1942 for use in German language instruction. Between 1942 and 1946, he was granted an extended wartime leave from his teaching position at Smith to serve with the "Ritchie Boys" (Military Intelligence Service). A second lieutenant, he served under Hans Habe in Germany, and he coauthored the screenplay of Death Mills (Die Todesmühlen), a documentary film about Nazi concentration camps that was directed by Billy Wilder.[9] While his father died in 1938 and his sister Ruth was imprisoned at hard labor from 1935 to 1940 for political activities before emigrating first to the Shanghai Ghetto and then to Australia, his mother was killed in Auschwitz, probably in 1943. In 1946, Seidlin recorded his religion as Lutheran on a personnel information form.

Ohio State University edit

Following World War II, Seidlin made the acquaintance of Bernhard Blume while teaching at the German Summer School of Middlebury College in Vermont.[10] Also an emigre who had left Nazi Germany in 1936, Blume chaired the Department of German at Ohio State University beginning in 1945, and he offered Seidlin an assistant professorship there. Seidlin moved to Columbus in the autumn of 1946, and he solidified his credentials with an essay on Goethe's Faust that appeared in the Publications of the Modern Language Association (1947).[11] This signaled a growing shift in Seidlin's scholarly focus from the politically and socially informed studies of his Frankfurt and Basel years to the canonical works of Weimar Classicism and German Romanticism favored in Germanistics during the Cold War period. He collaborated on An Outline‑History of German Literature (1948) with the prominent Swiss-American comparatist Werner Paul Friederich (1905–1993), professor at the University of North Carolina, and Philip Allison Shelley (1907–1974), head of the German Department at Pennsylvania State University. In rapid order, Seidlin was promoted to an associate professorship in 1948 and to a full professorship in 1950. He revisited the subject of his doctoral dissertation by editing the correspondence of Otto Brahm with Arthur Schnitzler (1953). To escape the summer heat in Columbus, Seidlin regularly taught at the Middlebury Summer School up to 1957, and he often spent the remaining summer weeks with Cunz and Plant on holiday at the beach of Manomet, Massachusetts, where they hobnobbed with the vacationing Hannah Arendt. In the following years, Seidlin's political outlook shifted strongly to the right under the influence of Arendt's concept of totalitarianism yoking together Nazism and Stalinism.

Starting in 1954, Seidlin traveled frequently to West Germany to give guest lectures. In 1957, following Blume's departure from Ohio State for a position at Harvard University, Cunz was tapped to chair the German Department in Columbus. He and Seidlin contracted to have a house built in the suburb Worthington that was completed in 1958, and in 1961 both were relieved by the addition of central air conditioning. These were the happiest and most productive years in Seidlin's career.[12] In quick succession, he published Essays in German and Comparative Literature (1961), followed by Von Goethe zu Thomas Mann. Zwölf Versuche (1963) and Versuche über Eichendorff (1965), which he personally regarded as his most heartfelt work, in part because he and Eichendorff shared a Silesian upbringing. He also authored the essay collection Klassische und moderne Klassiker. Goethe, Brentano, Eichendorff, Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann (1972). In 1966, he was named a Regents' Professor at Ohio State University, and he served on the Advisory Council of Princeton University for several terms.

The final years edit

Seidlin was alarmed by the leftist turn of literary studies in West Germany and the U.S. in the late 1960s and 1970s and vehemently declined professorships proffered by the University of Mainz in 1966 and the University of Munich in 1968 because of widespread student unrest at West German universities, which he found reminiscent of the events one generation earlier, leading up to totalitarian dictatorship in Nazi Germany.[13] He was criticized by some within the profession as an ivory tower conservative at pains to conceal both his gay and Jewish identities,[14] and he resigned from the Modern Language Association, regarding it as overly politicized. Following the death of Cunz at age 58 in 1969, Seidlin felt isolated in the Worthington house they had shared and found himself increasingly at odds with the chair of the German Department at Ohio State University, Cunz's successor. In 1972, he accepted an offer from Indiana University, where he taught as Distinguished Professor of Germanic languages and literatures until his retirement in May 1979. He published a second, expanded edition of the Brahm-Schnitzler correspondence, and he also reissued his doctoral dissertation on Brahm in a new printing.[15] His final book publication was the essay collection Von erwachendem Bewusstsein und vom Sündenfall. Brentano, Schiller, Kleist, Goethe (1979).

A selection of Seidlin's correspondence with Wilhelm Rey, who taught alongside Seidlin at Ohio State University in 1947–48, was published posthumously under the title "Bete für mich, mein Lieber..." in 2001.[16] Written between 1947 and 1984, these letters document that Seidlin was increasingly tormented by self-doubts about his teaching performance and needed the tranquilizers Miltown and Valium to enter the classroom. Deeply depressed by the passing of Dieter Cunz, he chose to undergo electroshock treatment in 1970. In 1972, he found a new partner in the 35-year-old Hans Høgel, whom he visited regularly in Denmark and with whom he vacationed in the Great Smoky Mountains and the Caribbean.[17] In 1982, he moved into the newly built Indiana University Retirement Community, an assisted living facility. A heavy smoker, he suffered a heart attack in June 1984 and was diagnosed with a malignant tumor at the beginning of October; he died nine weeks later. In accordance with his wishes, his mortal remains were interred alongside those of Dieter Cunz at the Walnut Grove Cemetery in Worthington.

Achievements and awards edit

Internationally acclaimed for his adeptness at close reading and text-immanent literary interpretation, Seidlin lectured widely in the U.S. and West Germany. His broadly informed and thorough essays cunningly revealed how seemingly minor details and apparent coincidences meld seamlessly into the higher order of a literary artwork, and his writing aspired to an expository virtuosity that matched the dignified elegance of his public presentations. He wrote over 200 contributions to scholarly journals. In 1958, he chaired the Germanic Section of the Modern Language Association. In the summer of 1959, he was named Ford Professor-in-Residence at the Free University of Berlin. In 1961, he received the Eichendorff Medal conferred by the Eichendorff Museum in Wangen im Allgäu. He was twice the recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships, in 1962 and 1976. In 1963, the Goethe Institute awarded him the Goethe Medal in Gold for meritorious work in the service of German culture in a foreign country. In 1965, he was elected first vice-president of the Modern Language Association. In 1968, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the University of Michigan and awarded the Prize for Germanic Studies Abroad by the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. In 1973, he was elected to the Göttingen Academy of Sciences as a corresponding member. In 1974, he received the Eichendorff Medal of the Eichendorff Society. In 1975, he received the Culture Prize of Upper Silesia awarded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and on this occasion delivered an address describing his Silesian boyhood, including the everyday anti-Semitism he had experienced there.[18] On his sixty-fifth birthday in 1976, he was honored with a Festschrift.[19] That year, he also received the Friedrich Gundolf Prize for Conveying German Culture Abroad from the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. In 1983, he was awarded the Georg Dehio Prize for Cultural and Intellectual History.

References edit

  1. ^ Hans-Ludwig Abmeier, "Seidlin, Oskar", Kulturportal West-Ost.
  2. ^ See Oskar Seidlin, "Martin Sommerfeld, geb. 1894, gest. d. 26. Juli 1939", Monatshefte, vol. 31, no. 7 (November 1939), pp. 355–356.
  3. ^ On his grudging service in the Wehrmacht, see William Henry Rey, The Political Life of a German Journalist, 1911–1948: A Personal Account (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2008). Rey was indebted to Richard Plant and Oskar Seidlin for enabling him to make a career shift from journalism to the academy when he immigrated to the U.S. in 1947, and he was well aware that he exercised an erotic allure on Seidlin. See Wilhelm Heinrich Rey, Du warst gut zu mir, Amerika! Roman einer gewagten Emigration (Frankfurt am Main: Haag und Herchen, 1999), p. 28.
  4. ^ A German-language plot summary of these novels, excerpted from Paul Ott, Mord im Alpenglühen. Der Schweizer Kriminalroman – Geschichte und Gegenwart (Wuppertal: Nordpark, 2005), appears online. An additional novel, entitled Verwirrung um Veronika, is said to have been serialized in the Zürcher Illustrierte in 1938. Cf. Angelika Jockers and Reinhard Jahn, eds., Lexikon der deutschsprachigen Krimi-Autoren (2nd ed., rev.; Munich: Verlag der Criminale, 2005).]
  5. ^ Stefan Brockhoff's "Zehn Gebote für den Kriminalroman" appears together with Glauser's work in Wachtmeister Studers erste Fälle, ed. Frank Göhre (Zurich: Arche, 1969), pp. 177–180. The text first appeared in the Zürcher Illustrierte, 5 February 1937, and is available online.
  6. ^ A plot summary is provided by WorldCat: "When the Pedroni Theatrical Troupe is not allowed to perform because the previous troupe is suspected in the disappearance of the Golden Apple that is the symbol of a Swiss town, two of the troupe's children along with the mayor's son and a young girl find a clue and help reveal the Apple's whereabouts through a play of their own."
  7. ^ Mein Bilderbuch bears the dedication "Für Dieter", i.e., for Dieter Cunz.
  8. ^ At Smith College, Seidlin filled the slot previously held by his Frankfurt teacher Martin Sommerfeld. While at Smith College, Seidlin became acquainted with Newton Arvin. See Claude Summers, "Newton Arvin", qlbtq Encyclopedia.
  9. ^ The British Film Institute provides information on Die Todesmühlen (1945) Additional German-language information is also available online.
  10. ^ See Oskar Seidlin, "In Memoriam: Bernhard Blume (1901–1978)", German Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 4 (1978), pp. 441–442.
  11. ^ Oskar Seidlin, "Helena: vom Mythos zur Person. Versuch einer Neu‑Interpretation des Helena‑Aktes, Faust II", PMLA, vol. 62, no. 1 (1947), pp. 183–212.
  12. ^ Seidlin chronicled his years working alongside Cunz in "The History of the Department of German of the Ohio State University, on the Occasion of the University's Centenary", available online.
  13. ^ See Gisela Hoecherl-Alden, "Upholding the Ideals of the 'Other Germany': German-Jewish Goethe Scholars in U.S. Exile", in Goethe in German-Jewish Culture, ed. Klaus L. Berghahn and Jost Hermand (Rochester: Camden House, 2001), pp. 123–145, here p. 134.
  14. ^ William H. Rey and Henry J. Schmidt, "Colloquium: Oskar Seidlin and 'Oppositional Criticism'", Monatshefte, vol. 80, no. 3 (1988), pp. 297–301. See also the characterization of Seidlin as "archconservative" by Egon Schwarz, "Eine kleine Geschichte der miterlebten amerikanischen Germanistik aus subjektiver Sicht", Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, vol. 26, no. 2 (1996), pp. 142–148, here p. 144.
  15. ^ The correspondence volume bears the dedication "Für Hans", i.e., for Hans Høgel.
  16. ^ "Bete für mich, mein Lieber...": Oskar Seidlin—Willy Rey Briefwechsel, ed. William H. Rey (Oldenburg: Igel-Verlag Literatur, 2001), 217 pages.
  17. ^ Seidlin described his relationship with Høgel in his correspondence with William Rey (see note 16). See also Albrecht Holschuh, "Oskar Seidlins 'Letzter Sommer in Dänemark'", Germanic Review, vol. 62, no. 1 (1987), pp. 2–9.
  18. ^ Oskar Seidlin, "Dankeswort" (bei der Entgegennahme des Oberschlesischen Kulturpreises des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen), in Erbe und Auftrag. Oberschlesischer Kulturpreis 1965–1985, ed. Waldemar Zylla (Dülmen: Laumann, 1988), pp. 89–94.
  19. ^ Herkommen und Erneuerung. Essays für Oskar Seidlin, ed. Gerald Gillespie and Edgar Lohner (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976), xiv + 434 pages, with contributions by Käte Hamburger, Erich Heller, Egon Schwarz, Heinz Politzer, Henry H. H. Remak, Walter H. Sokel, et al.

Books edit

  • Stefan Brockhoff (i.e., Oskar Koplowitz, Dieter Cunz, and Richard Plaut). 1935. Schuß auf die Bühne. Detektiv-Roman. Goldmanns Detektiv-Romane. Leipzig: Wilhelm Goldmann. 244 pages. 2nd ed.: Schuß auf die Bühne. Kriminal-Roman. Goldmanns Kriminal-Romane, no. 79. Munich: Wilhelm Goldmann, 1965. 214 pages.
  • Stefan Brockhoff (i.e., Oskar Koplowitz, Dieter Cunz, and Richard Plaut). 1936. Musik im Totengässlein. Detektiv-Roman. Goldmanns Roman-Bibliothek, no. 29. Leipzig: Wilhelm Goldmann. 217 pages. 2nd ed.: Musik im Totengässlein. Kriminal-Roman. Goldmanns Kriminal-Romane, no. 69. Munich: Wilhelm Goldmann, 1965. 203 pages. 3rd ed.: Musik im Totengässlein. Detektiv-Roman, ed. Paul Ott and Kurt Stadelmann. Schweizer Texte, Neue Folge, no. 25. Zurich: Chronos, 2007. 205 pages.
  • Oskar Koplowitz. 1936. Otto Brahm als Theaterkritiker. Mit Berücksichtigung seiner literarhistorischen Arbeiten. Doctoral dissertation, University of Basel. Zurich: Max Niehans. viii + 218 pages.
    • Oskar Seidlin. 1978. Der Theaterkritiker Otto Brahm. Bonn: Bouvier. viii + 216 pages.
  • Stefan Brockhoff (i.e., Oskar Koplowitz, Dieter Cunz, and Richard Plaut). 1937. Drei Kioske am See. Goldmanns Roman-Bibliothek. Leipzig: Wilhelm Goldmann. 217 pages. 2nd ed.: Drei Kioske am See. Kriminal-Roman. Goldmanns Kriminal-Romane, no. 73. Munich: Wilhelm Goldmann, 1964. 204 pages.
  • Oskar Seidlin. 1937. Pedronis muss geholfen werden! Eine Erzählung für die Jugend, with illustrations by Felix Hoffmann. Aarau: H. R. Sauerländer. 232 pages.
    • Oskar Seidlin. 1942. Der goldene Apfel. Eine Erzählung für die Jugend, abridged ed. with questions, exercises, and vocabulary by Ann Elizabeth Mensel. New York: F. S. Crofts. x + 189 pages. London: George G. Harrap, 1948. x + 189 pages.
    • Oskar Seidlin. 1943. Green Wagons, trans. Senta Jonas Rypins and illustrations by Barbara Cooney. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 130 pages. Special ed.: Cadmus Books. Eau Claire: E. M. Hale, 1943. 130 pages.
    • Oskar Seidlin. 1969. Waldwyl und die Theaterleute. Kleine Bücherei für schreib-leseschwache Kinder (Legastheniker). Aarau: H. R. Sauerländer. 47 pages.
  • Oskar Seidlin. 1938. Mein Bilderbuch. Gedichte. Zurich: Oprecht. 72 pages.
  • Oskar Seidlin and Richard Plaut. [1939]. S.O.S. Genf. Ein Friedensbuch für Kinder, with 40 illustrations by Susel Bischoff. Zurich: Humanitas. 256 pages.
    • Oskar Seidlin and Richard Plant. 1939. S.O.S. Geneva, with 29 illustrations by William Pène du Bois. Adapted into English by Ralph Manheim. New York: Viking Press. 246 pages.
  • Werner Paul Friedrich, Oskar Seidlin, and Philip Allison Shelley. 1948. An Outline‑History of German Literature. College Outline Series, no. 65. New York: Barnes & Noble. 396 pages. 2nd rev. ed. 1963. viii + 356 pages.
    • Werner Paul Friedrich, Oskar Seidlin, and Philip Allison Shelley. 1961. Historia de la literatura alemana, trans. Aníbal Leal. México: Hermes. 321 pages.
  • Oskar Seidlin, ed. 1953. Der Briefwechsel Arthur Schnitzler—Otto Brahm. Berlin: Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte. 266 pages.
    • Oskar Seidlin, ed. 1975. Briefwechsel Arthur Schnitzler—Otto Brahm. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. 362 pages.
  • Stefan Brockhoff (i.e., Oskar Seidlin, Dieter Cunz, and Richard Plant). 1955. Begegnung in Zermatt. Kriminal-Roman. Goldmanns Taschen-Krimi, no. 61. Munich: Goldmann, 1955. 182 pages.
  • Oskar Seidlin. 1961. Essays in German and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 254 pages. 2nd ed., New York: Johnson Reprint, 1966. 254 pages.
  • Oskar Seidlin. 1963. Von Goethe zu Thomas Mann. Zwölf Versuche. Kleine Vandenhoeck-Reihe, no. 1705. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 246 pages. 2nd, rev. ed., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969. 246 pages.
  • Oskar Seidlin. 1965. Versuche über Eichendorff. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 303 pages. 2nd printing, 1978. 3rd printing, 1985.
  • Oskar Seidlin. 1972. Klassische und moderne Klassiker. Goethe, Brentano, Eichendorff, Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 154 pages.
  • Oskar Seidlin. 1979. Von erwachendem Bewusstsein und vom Sündenfall. Brentano, Schiller, Kleist, Goethe. Stuttgart: E. Klett–J. G. Cotta. 171 pages.

Bibliography edit

  • "Seidlin, Oskar". In Archiv Bibliographia Judaica, ed., Lexikon deutsch-jüdischer Autoren, vol. 19: Sand–Stri, pp. 212–218. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012.
  • "Seidlin, Oskar". In Franz Heiduk, Oberschlesisches Literatur-Lexikon, part 3, pp. 95–96. Heidelberg: Palatina, 2000.
  • Peter Boerner, "Oskar Seidlin". In John M. Spalek et al., eds, Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur seit 1933, vol. 3: USA, supplement 1, pp 307–315. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010.
  • "Seidlin, Oskar". In Werner Röder and Herbert A. Strauss, eds., International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945, vol. 2, part 2, p. 1071. Munich: Saur, 1983.

External links edit

  • Photo of Oskar Koplowitz (at left) with Dieter Cunz (right) and Richard Plaut (center) at the Gornergrat, ca. 1935
  • Photo of Oskar Seidlin, ca. 1982
  • Photo of the Dieter Cunz / Oskar Seidlin tombstone in Worthington, Ohio
  • Ohio State University personnel files
  • Oskar Seidlin at IMDb

oskar, seidlin, seidlin, redirects, here, judge, larry, seidlin, february, 1911, december, 1984, jewish, emigre, from, nazi, germany, first, switzerland, then, taught, german, language, literature, professor, smith, college, middlebury, college, ohio, state, u. Seidlin redirects here For the U S judge see Larry Seidlin Oskar Seidlin February 17 1911 December 11 1984 was a Jewish emigre from Nazi Germany first to Switzerland and then to the U S He taught German language and literature as a professor at Smith College Middlebury College Ohio State University and Indiana University from 1939 to 1979 He authored a number of fictional and non fictional works Oskar SeidlinBornSalo Oskar Koplowitz 1911 02 17 February 17 1911Konigshutte Prussian SilesiaGerman EmpireDiedDecember 11 1984 1984 12 11 aged 73 Bloomington IndianaUnited StatesResting placeWalnut Grove Cemetery Worthington OhioNationalityGerman U S as of 1943Alma materUniversity of BaselOccupation s Professor of German authorYears active1939 1979Partner s Dieter CunzHans HogelAwardsGoethe Medal in Gold 1963 Friedrich Gundolf Prize 1976 Georg Dehio Prize 1983 External imagePortrait photograph of Oskar Seidlin as a Guggenheim Fellow c 1976 Contents 1 Early years and education 2 Studies in Switzerland 3 Emigration to the U S 4 Ohio State University 5 The final years 6 Achievements and awards 7 References 8 Books 9 Bibliography 10 External linksEarly years and education editHe was born Salo Oskar Koplowitz to Johanna 1885 1943 and Heinrich Koplowitz 1872 1938 a lumber dealer in Konigshutte in the Upper Silesia Basin of Germany now Chorzow in southwestern Poland who served for many years as a city council alderman and was an active Zionist and member of the Jewish community 1 After completing secondary schooling at the humanities focused Realgymnasium in Beuthen now Bytom in 1929 he enrolled for one semester at the University of Freiburg and then transferred to the recently founded University of Frankfurt which enjoyed a reputation as Germany s most progressive university and also had the highest percentage of Jewish students and professors Here he was joined by his sister Ruth five years his senior and attended courses on German literature taught by Wolfgang Pfeiffer Belli Julius Schwietering Franz Schultz Max Herrmann French literature philosophy Paul Tillich and history He also audited courses in sociology Theodor Adorno Norbert Elias Karl Mannheim In a seminar on baroque literature taught by Martin Sommerfeld 2 he made the acquaintance of the gay Jewish student Richard Plaut beginning a friendship they maintained when they later emigrated to Switzerland and the U S In the fall of 1930 he transferred with Plaut for one semester to the University of Berlin where they became acquainted with the Kattowitz editor Franz Goldstein and through him with Klaus Mann both of whom were infatuated with Koplowitz Upon returning to Frankfurt in 1931 he met the history student Dieter Cunz who became his lifetime partner He also met the students Wilhelm Rey 1911 2007 and Wilhelm Emrich 1909 1998 who became lifelong friends and eventually colleagues despite their later accommodation with the Nazi regime Rey served in the Wehrmacht 3 and Emrich authored a doctrinaire anti Semitic essay in 1943 In the closing years of the Weimar Republic Koplowitz Cunz Plaut Rey and Emrich sympathized with Frankfurt s leftist student political group that was increasingly on the defensive when the growing Nazi Students League felt emboldened to disrupt courses taught by Jewish professors including Sommerfeld Koplowitz s primary interest was theater directing and in 1932 he mounted a production of John Gay s The Beggar s Opera with student friends Studies in Switzerland editIn February 1933 following Hitler s rise to power Plaut left Germany for Switzerland where he was joined in April by Koplowitz They initially regarded the move as a temporary transfer not a permanent emigration and expected to return to Frankfurt once the Nazis had been turned out of office While Plaut and Koplowitz enrolled at the University of Basel in 1933 Cunz a gentile remained in Frankfurt but after completing his Ph D in 1934 also relocated to Switzerland Hard pressed financially and constrained in employment by their Swiss student visas Koplowitz and Plaut relied on writing under pseudonyms as their primary source of income Together with Cunz they coauthored three detective novels under the collective pen name Stefan Brockhoff that were published in Nazi Germany 4 Contemporaries of Friedrich Glauser Koplowitz et al are recognized as pioneers of the Swiss crime story genre distinguished by setting and the occasional use of Helvetisms 5 In 1936 Koplowitz completed a Ph D with a summa cum laude dissertation on the Naturalistic theater work of the leftist German Jewish director Otto Brahm written under the supervision first of Franz Zinkernagel who died in 1935 and then Eduard Hoffmann Krayer He then relocated with Cunz to Lausanne where he pursued postgraduate studies in French language and literature One year later Plaut also finished his doctorate Since their student visas were no longer extended following the completion of the Ph D Plaut and Koplowitz were under increasing pressure to leave Switzerland In 1937 Koplowitz used the pen name Oskar Seidlin possibly devised because of its similarity both to his mother s maiden name Seidler and to Holderlin for his young readers tale Pedronis muss geholfen werden 6 A collection of his poems entitled Mein Bilderbuch was published under the same nom de plume in 1938 7 Together with Plaut Koplowitz and Cunz decided to emigrate to the U S Emigration to the U S editIn 1938 the three left Switzerland for New York where within a year their paths diverged Koplowitz worked briefly as a dishwasher before finding employment as an amanuensis for the emigres Thomas Mann and Erika Mann In 1939 he obtained a lecturership in German language and literature at Smith College in Northampton Massachusetts where he advanced to an assistant professorship in 1941 8 Cunz was awarded a grant to conduct historical research in Maryland and in 1939 he received a teaching appointment at the University of Maryland where he rose through the ranks and long chaired the Department of German Plaut remained in New York City where he officially changed his name to Plant and worked for the emigre Klaus Mann Koplowitz would officially change his name to Seidlin in 1943 when he was naturalized as a U S citizen With Plant he coauthored S O S Geneva a young readers book with a cosmopolitan and pacifistic theme that was published in English in October 1939 just before the outbreak of World War II Under the title Der goldene Apfel an abridged and annotated version of Seidlin s Pedronis muss geholfen werden was published in 1942 for use in German language instruction Between 1942 and 1946 he was granted an extended wartime leave from his teaching position at Smith to serve with the Ritchie Boys Military Intelligence Service A second lieutenant he served under Hans Habe in Germany and he coauthored the screenplay of Death Mills Die Todesmuhlen a documentary film about Nazi concentration camps that was directed by Billy Wilder 9 While his father died in 1938 and his sister Ruth was imprisoned at hard labor from 1935 to 1940 for political activities before emigrating first to the Shanghai Ghetto and then to Australia his mother was killed in Auschwitz probably in 1943 In 1946 Seidlin recorded his religion as Lutheran on a personnel information form Ohio State University editFollowing World War II Seidlin made the acquaintance of Bernhard Blume while teaching at the German Summer School of Middlebury College in Vermont 10 Also an emigre who had left Nazi Germany in 1936 Blume chaired the Department of German at Ohio State University beginning in 1945 and he offered Seidlin an assistant professorship there Seidlin moved to Columbus in the autumn of 1946 and he solidified his credentials with an essay on Goethe s Faust that appeared in the Publications of the Modern Language Association 1947 11 This signaled a growing shift in Seidlin s scholarly focus from the politically and socially informed studies of his Frankfurt and Basel years to the canonical works of Weimar Classicism and German Romanticism favored in Germanistics during the Cold War period He collaborated on An Outline History of German Literature 1948 with the prominent Swiss American comparatist Werner Paul Friederich 1905 1993 professor at the University of North Carolina and Philip Allison Shelley 1907 1974 head of the German Department at Pennsylvania State University In rapid order Seidlin was promoted to an associate professorship in 1948 and to a full professorship in 1950 He revisited the subject of his doctoral dissertation by editing the correspondence of Otto Brahm with Arthur Schnitzler 1953 To escape the summer heat in Columbus Seidlin regularly taught at the Middlebury Summer School up to 1957 and he often spent the remaining summer weeks with Cunz and Plant on holiday at the beach of Manomet Massachusetts where they hobnobbed with the vacationing Hannah Arendt In the following years Seidlin s political outlook shifted strongly to the right under the influence of Arendt s concept of totalitarianism yoking together Nazism and Stalinism Starting in 1954 Seidlin traveled frequently to West Germany to give guest lectures In 1957 following Blume s departure from Ohio State for a position at Harvard University Cunz was tapped to chair the German Department in Columbus He and Seidlin contracted to have a house built in the suburb Worthington that was completed in 1958 and in 1961 both were relieved by the addition of central air conditioning These were the happiest and most productive years in Seidlin s career 12 In quick succession he published Essays in German and Comparative Literature 1961 followed by Von Goethe zu Thomas Mann Zwolf Versuche 1963 and Versuche uber Eichendorff 1965 which he personally regarded as his most heartfelt work in part because he and Eichendorff shared a Silesian upbringing He also authored the essay collection Klassische und moderne Klassiker Goethe Brentano Eichendorff Gerhart Hauptmann Thomas Mann 1972 In 1966 he was named a Regents Professor at Ohio State University and he served on the Advisory Council of Princeton University for several terms The final years editSeidlin was alarmed by the leftist turn of literary studies in West Germany and the U S in the late 1960s and 1970s and vehemently declined professorships proffered by the University of Mainz in 1966 and the University of Munich in 1968 because of widespread student unrest at West German universities which he found reminiscent of the events one generation earlier leading up to totalitarian dictatorship in Nazi Germany 13 He was criticized by some within the profession as an ivory tower conservative at pains to conceal both his gay and Jewish identities 14 and he resigned from the Modern Language Association regarding it as overly politicized Following the death of Cunz at age 58 in 1969 Seidlin felt isolated in the Worthington house they had shared and found himself increasingly at odds with the chair of the German Department at Ohio State University Cunz s successor In 1972 he accepted an offer from Indiana University where he taught as Distinguished Professor of Germanic languages and literatures until his retirement in May 1979 He published a second expanded edition of the Brahm Schnitzler correspondence and he also reissued his doctoral dissertation on Brahm in a new printing 15 His final book publication was the essay collection Von erwachendem Bewusstsein und vom Sundenfall Brentano Schiller Kleist Goethe 1979 A selection of Seidlin s correspondence with Wilhelm Rey who taught alongside Seidlin at Ohio State University in 1947 48 was published posthumously under the title Bete fur mich mein Lieber in 2001 16 Written between 1947 and 1984 these letters document that Seidlin was increasingly tormented by self doubts about his teaching performance and needed the tranquilizers Miltown and Valium to enter the classroom Deeply depressed by the passing of Dieter Cunz he chose to undergo electroshock treatment in 1970 In 1972 he found a new partner in the 35 year old Hans Hogel whom he visited regularly in Denmark and with whom he vacationed in the Great Smoky Mountains and the Caribbean 17 In 1982 he moved into the newly built Indiana University Retirement Community an assisted living facility A heavy smoker he suffered a heart attack in June 1984 and was diagnosed with a malignant tumor at the beginning of October he died nine weeks later In accordance with his wishes his mortal remains were interred alongside those of Dieter Cunz at the Walnut Grove Cemetery in Worthington Achievements and awards editInternationally acclaimed for his adeptness at close reading and text immanent literary interpretation Seidlin lectured widely in the U S and West Germany His broadly informed and thorough essays cunningly revealed how seemingly minor details and apparent coincidences meld seamlessly into the higher order of a literary artwork and his writing aspired to an expository virtuosity that matched the dignified elegance of his public presentations He wrote over 200 contributions to scholarly journals In 1958 he chaired the Germanic Section of the Modern Language Association In the summer of 1959 he was named Ford Professor in Residence at the Free University of Berlin In 1961 he received the Eichendorff Medal conferred by the Eichendorff Museum in Wangen im Allgau He was twice the recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships in 1962 and 1976 In 1963 the Goethe Institute awarded him the Goethe Medal in Gold for meritorious work in the service of German culture in a foreign country In 1965 he was elected first vice president of the Modern Language Association In 1968 he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the University of Michigan and awarded the Prize for Germanic Studies Abroad by the Deutsche Akademie fur Sprache und Dichtung In 1973 he was elected to the Gottingen Academy of Sciences as a corresponding member In 1974 he received the Eichendorff Medal of the Eichendorff Society In 1975 he received the Culture Prize of Upper Silesia awarded by the state of North Rhine Westphalia and on this occasion delivered an address describing his Silesian boyhood including the everyday anti Semitism he had experienced there 18 On his sixty fifth birthday in 1976 he was honored with a Festschrift 19 That year he also received the Friedrich Gundolf Prize for Conveying German Culture Abroad from the Deutsche Akademie fur Sprache und Dichtung In 1983 he was awarded the Georg Dehio Prize for Cultural and Intellectual History References edit Hans Ludwig Abmeier Seidlin Oskar Kulturportal West Ost See Oskar Seidlin Martin Sommerfeld geb 1894 gest d 26 Juli 1939 Monatshefte vol 31 no 7 November 1939 pp 355 356 On his grudging service in the Wehrmacht see William Henry Rey The Political Life of a German Journalist 1911 1948 A Personal Account Lewiston Edwin Mellen 2008 Rey was indebted to Richard Plant and Oskar Seidlin for enabling him to make a career shift from journalism to the academy when he immigrated to the U S in 1947 and he was well aware that he exercised an erotic allure on Seidlin See Wilhelm Heinrich Rey Du warst gut zu mir Amerika Roman einer gewagten Emigration Frankfurt am Main Haag und Herchen 1999 p 28 A German language plot summary of these novels excerpted from Paul Ott Mord im Alpengluhen Der Schweizer Kriminalroman Geschichte und Gegenwart Wuppertal Nordpark 2005 appears online An additional novel entitled Verwirrung um Veronika is said to have been serialized in the Zurcher Illustrierte in 1938 Cf Angelika Jockers and Reinhard Jahn eds Lexikon der deutschsprachigen Krimi Autoren 2nd ed rev Munich Verlag der Criminale 2005 Stefan Brockhoff s Zehn Gebote fur den Kriminalroman appears together with Glauser s work in Wachtmeister Studers erste Falle ed Frank Gohre Zurich Arche 1969 pp 177 180 The text first appeared in the Zurcher Illustrierte 5 February 1937 and is available online A plot summary is provided by WorldCat When the Pedroni Theatrical Troupe is not allowed to perform because the previous troupe is suspected in the disappearance of the Golden Apple that is the symbol of a Swiss town two of the troupe s children along with the mayor s son and a young girl find a clue and help reveal the Apple s whereabouts through a play of their own Mein Bilderbuch bears the dedication Fur Dieter i e for Dieter Cunz At Smith College Seidlin filled the slot previously held by his Frankfurt teacher Martin Sommerfeld While at Smith College Seidlin became acquainted with Newton Arvin See Claude Summers Newton Arvin qlbtq Encyclopedia The British Film Institute provides information on Die Todesmuhlen 1945 online Additional German language information is also available online See Oskar Seidlin In Memoriam Bernhard Blume 1901 1978 German Quarterly vol 51 no 4 1978 pp 441 442 Oskar Seidlin Helena vom Mythos zur Person Versuch einer Neu Interpretation des Helena Aktes Faust II PMLA vol 62 no 1 1947 pp 183 212 Seidlin chronicled his years working alongside Cunz in The History of the Department of German of the Ohio State University on the Occasion of the University s Centenary available online See Gisela Hoecherl Alden Upholding the Ideals of the Other Germany German Jewish Goethe Scholars in U S Exile in Goethe in German Jewish Culture ed Klaus L Berghahn and Jost Hermand Rochester Camden House 2001 pp 123 145 here p 134 William H Rey and Henry J Schmidt Colloquium Oskar Seidlin and Oppositional Criticism Monatshefte vol 80 no 3 1988 pp 297 301 See also the characterization of Seidlin as archconservative by Egon Schwarz Eine kleine Geschichte der miterlebten amerikanischen Germanistik aus subjektiver Sicht Zeitschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik vol 26 no 2 1996 pp 142 148 here p 144 The correspondence volume bears the dedication Fur Hans i e for Hans Hogel Bete fur mich mein Lieber Oskar Seidlin Willy Rey Briefwechsel ed William H Rey Oldenburg Igel Verlag Literatur 2001 217 pages Seidlin described his relationship with Hogel in his correspondence with William Rey see note 16 See also Albrecht Holschuh Oskar Seidlins Letzter Sommer in Danemark Germanic Review vol 62 no 1 1987 pp 2 9 Oskar Seidlin Dankeswort bei der Entgegennahme des Oberschlesischen Kulturpreises des Landes Nordrhein Westfalen in Erbe und Auftrag Oberschlesischer Kulturpreis 1965 1985 ed Waldemar Zylla Dulmen Laumann 1988 pp 89 94 Herkommen und Erneuerung Essays fur Oskar Seidlin ed Gerald Gillespie and Edgar Lohner Tubingen Niemeyer 1976 xiv 434 pages with contributions by Kate Hamburger Erich Heller Egon Schwarz Heinz Politzer Henry H H Remak Walter H Sokel et al Books editStefan Brockhoff i e Oskar Koplowitz Dieter Cunz and Richard Plaut 1935 Schuss auf die Buhne Detektiv Roman Goldmanns Detektiv Romane Leipzig Wilhelm Goldmann 244 pages 2nd ed Schuss auf die Buhne Kriminal Roman Goldmanns Kriminal Romane no 79 Munich Wilhelm Goldmann 1965 214 pages Stefan Brockhoff i e Oskar Koplowitz Dieter Cunz and Richard Plaut 1936 Musik im Totengasslein Detektiv Roman Goldmanns Roman Bibliothek no 29 Leipzig Wilhelm Goldmann 217 pages 2nd ed Musik im Totengasslein Kriminal Roman Goldmanns Kriminal Romane no 69 Munich Wilhelm Goldmann 1965 203 pages 3rd ed Musik im Totengasslein Detektiv Roman ed Paul Ott and Kurt Stadelmann Schweizer Texte Neue Folge no 25 Zurich Chronos 2007 205 pages Oskar Koplowitz 1936 Otto Brahm als Theaterkritiker Mit Berucksichtigung seiner literarhistorischen Arbeiten Doctoral dissertation University of Basel Zurich Max Niehans viii 218 pages Oskar Seidlin 1978 Der Theaterkritiker Otto Brahm Bonn Bouvier viii 216 pages Stefan Brockhoff i e Oskar Koplowitz Dieter Cunz and Richard Plaut 1937 Drei Kioske am See Goldmanns Roman Bibliothek Leipzig Wilhelm Goldmann 217 pages 2nd ed Drei Kioske am See Kriminal Roman Goldmanns Kriminal Romane no 73 Munich Wilhelm Goldmann 1964 204 pages Oskar Seidlin 1937 Pedronis muss geholfen werden Eine Erzahlung fur die Jugend with illustrations by Felix Hoffmann Aarau H R Sauerlander 232 pages Oskar Seidlin 1942 Der goldene Apfel Eine Erzahlung fur die Jugend abridged ed with questions exercises and vocabulary by Ann Elizabeth Mensel New York F S Crofts x 189 pages London George G Harrap 1948 x 189 pages Oskar Seidlin 1943 Green Wagons trans Senta Jonas Rypins and illustrations by Barbara Cooney Boston Houghton Mifflin 130 pages Special ed Cadmus Books Eau Claire E M Hale 1943 130 pages Oskar Seidlin 1969 Waldwyl und die Theaterleute Kleine Bucherei fur schreib leseschwache Kinder Legastheniker Aarau H R Sauerlander 47 pages Oskar Seidlin 1938 Mein Bilderbuch Gedichte Zurich Oprecht 72 pages Oskar Seidlin and Richard Plaut 1939 S O S Genf Ein Friedensbuch fur Kinder with 40 illustrations by Susel Bischoff Zurich Humanitas 256 pages Oskar Seidlin and Richard Plant 1939 S O S Geneva with 29 illustrations by William Pene du Bois Adapted into English by Ralph Manheim New York Viking Press 246 pages Werner Paul Friedrich Oskar Seidlin and Philip Allison Shelley 1948 An Outline History of German Literature College Outline Series no 65 New York Barnes amp Noble 396 pages 2nd rev ed 1963 viii 356 pages Werner Paul Friedrich Oskar Seidlin and Philip Allison Shelley 1961 Historia de la literatura alemana trans Anibal Leal Mexico Hermes 321 pages Oskar Seidlin ed 1953 Der Briefwechsel Arthur Schnitzler Otto Brahm Berlin Gesellschaft fur Theatergeschichte 266 pages Oskar Seidlin ed 1975 Briefwechsel Arthur Schnitzler Otto Brahm Tubingen Max Niemeyer 362 pages Stefan Brockhoff i e Oskar Seidlin Dieter Cunz and Richard Plant 1955 Begegnung in Zermatt Kriminal Roman Goldmanns Taschen Krimi no 61 Munich Goldmann 1955 182 pages Oskar Seidlin 1961 Essays in German and Comparative Literature Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 254 pages 2nd ed New York Johnson Reprint 1966 254 pages Oskar Seidlin 1963 Von Goethe zu Thomas Mann Zwolf Versuche Kleine Vandenhoeck Reihe no 1705 Gottingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 246 pages 2nd rev ed Gottingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 1969 246 pages Oskar Seidlin 1965 Versuche uber Eichendorff Gottingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 303 pages 2nd printing 1978 3rd printing 1985 Oskar Seidlin 1972 Klassische und moderne Klassiker Goethe Brentano Eichendorff Gerhart Hauptmann Thomas Mann Gottingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht 154 pages Oskar Seidlin 1979 Von erwachendem Bewusstsein und vom Sundenfall Brentano Schiller Kleist Goethe Stuttgart E Klett J G Cotta 171 pages Bibliography edit Seidlin Oskar In Archiv Bibliographia Judaica ed Lexikon deutsch judischer Autoren vol 19 Sand Stri pp 212 218 Berlin de Gruyter 2012 Seidlin Oskar In Franz Heiduk Oberschlesisches Literatur Lexikon part 3 pp 95 96 Heidelberg Palatina 2000 Peter Boerner Oskar Seidlin In John M Spalek et al eds Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur seit 1933 vol 3 USA supplement 1 pp 307 315 Berlin Walter de Gruyter 2010 Seidlin Oskar In Werner Roder and Herbert A Strauss eds International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigres 1933 1945 vol 2 part 2 p 1071 Munich Saur 1983 External links editPhoto of Oskar Koplowitz at left with Dieter Cunz right and Richard Plaut center at the Gornergrat ca 1935 Photo of Oskar Seidlin ca 1982 Photo of the Dieter Cunz Oskar Seidlin tombstone in Worthington Ohio Ohio State University personnel files Oskar Seidlin at IMDb Portal nbsp Children s literature Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Oskar Seidlin amp oldid 1214070848, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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