Walter Silz

Walter Silz (27 September 1894, Cleveland – 30 May 1980, Princeton, New Jersey) was an American professor of German language and literature and in 1965 winner of the Grosses Verdienstkreuz from West Germany.[1]

Walter Silz
Awards
Academic background
Alma materHarvard University
Academic work
DisciplineGerman language and literature
Institutions

Biography

Born to a German-American family in Cleveland, Silz received his A.B. in 1917 and his Ph.D. in 1922 from Harvard University.[2] In 1922 he married Frieda Bertha Ruprecht Osgood, the daughter of William Fogg Osgood;[3] she died in 1937.[4] Silz taught at Harvard and at Washington University in St. Louis before becoming a professor at Swarthmore College. He headed what was then the German section of the department of modern languages at Princeton University from 1948 to 1954.[5] From 1954 to 1963 he held the Gebhard Chair of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. He was twice awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, once for the academic year 1926–1927 and again for the academic year 1960–1961. He died in 1980. His second wife, Priscilla Kramer Silz, was a professor of German at Rider College.[2]

Selected works

as author:

  • Heinrich von Kleist's conception of the tragic. 1923.[6]
  • Early German romanticism. Harvard U. Press. 1929.
  • Realism and reality: studies in the German novelle of poetic realism. U. of North Carolina Press. 1954.
  • Heinrich von Kleist: studies in his work and literary character. U. of Pennsylvania Press. 1961.
  • Hölderlin's Hyperion: a critical reading. U. of Pennsylvania Press. 1969.

as editor: German romantic lyrics. 1934.

References
  1. "Silz, Walter". Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950. 1: 1738.
  2. "Obituary: Walter Silz". Town Topics (Princeton). XXXV. 4 June 1980. p. 21.
  3. "Walter Silz married to Frieda Osgood". Harvard Alumni Bulletin. 1922. p. 710.
  4. ArchiveGrid: Scrapbook of Frieda Osgood Silz, 1908–1927
  5. In 1958 Princeton University created its German department with Victor Lange as chair.
  6. Blankenagel, John C. (November 1925). "Review: Heinrich von Kleist's Conception of the Tragic by Walter Silz". Modern Philology. 23 (2): 244–246. JSTOR 433687.
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