Helmut Pfanner

Professor of German, Emeritus

A native of Austria, Pfanner arrived at Vanderbilt in 1990 as chair of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, a position he held for three years. From 1992-99, he directed the Summer Institute for German Language and Culture at the University of California in Santa Barbara. His research has focused on 19th- and 20th-century German, Austrian and Swiss literature and German-American literary and cultural relations. His annotated bibliography of the works of exile writer Oskar Maria Graf is considered to be the standard research tool in this area. His edition of Graf's essays and speeches composes one of the volumes of Graf's collected works, as does his co-edition of Graf's letters. His articles on Kurt Waldinger, as well as his book on the German and Austrian exile communities in New York, led the Waldinger heirs to bequeath a part of the writer's literary estate to the Vanderbilt University library. Pfanner has published a dozen books and editions, one exhibit catalog, some 120 articles and smaller texts in journals and newspapers and more than 100 reviews. His monograph on the life and works of Karl Jakob Hirsch, appeared in 2008.