Prof. Dieter Schlenstedt †

01 Jan 1993 – 31 Dec 1993 guest at the ZfL

Literary scholar

CV

Dieter Schlenstedt, born on August 30th, 1932 in Blankenburg, died on May 27th, 2012 in Berlin, studied German language and literature from 1951 to 1955 and then worked as a lecturer at the Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Fakultät at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. From 1963 to 1966 he was editor of the literary magazine Weimarer Beiträge. From 1966 he was a research associate at the Central Institute for Literary History of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, where he served as co-editor of the historical dictionary Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, among other functions. In 1991 Schlenstedt was elected the last president of the PEN Centre (East) and subsequently became a member of the PEN Centre Germany. He also held visiting professorships at the University of Siegen, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Research Interests

  • Modern German literature in the GDR
  • Literary theory
  • GDR, modernism, and post-modernism

Publications

Monographs (Selection)

  • Egon Kirsch: Leben und Werk. Berlin: Volk und Wissen 1985
  • Wirkungsästhetische Analysen. Poetologie und Prosa in der neueren DDR-Literatur. Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1979

Edited volumes (Selection)

  • Funktion der Literatur. Aspekte, Probleme, Aufgaben. Berlin: Akadmie Verlag 1975 (with Brigitte Burmeister, Ilse Idzikowski, Dieter Kliche)

Articles (Selection)

  • Entwicklungslinien der neueren Literatur in der DDR, in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik 9 (1988), 5–23
  • LiterarischesWerk? – Zu Rahmenbestimmungen eines Begriffsfeldes, in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik 8 (1987) 3, 297–310