Walter Jens | |
---|---|
Born |
Hamburg, Germany | 8 March 1923
Died | 9 June 2013 | (aged 90)
Occupation(s) | Professor, philologist, writer |
Walter Jens (8 March 1923 – 9 June 2013) was a German philologist, literature historian, critic, university professor and writer. [1]
He was born in Hamburg, and attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums from 1933 to 1941, when he gained his Abitur, [2] before studying at the University of Hamburg. [3]
In the early 1940s, Jens joined the NSDAP. [4] [5] He denied having applied for membership actively and claimed that he had become a member automatically because he was a member of the Hitler Youth and that he never received a membership card.
During World War II, he earned a doctorate in Freiburg with a work about Sophocles' tragedy and habilitated at age 26 with the work Tacitus und die Freiheit (Tacitus and Freedom) at the University of Tübingen. [6]
From 1950 onward, he was a member of the Group 47. [7] That year, he had his breakthrough with the novel Nein. Die Welt der Angeklagten. [8] [9]
From 1965 to 1988, Jens held the chair for General Rhetoric at the University of Tübingen, [10] which was created in order to keep him at the university. Under the pseudonym Momos, he wrote television reviews for Die Zeit. [11] From 1976 to 1982, he was president of the International PEN center in Germany. [10] From 1989 to 1997, he was president of the Academy of Arts, Berlin, and afterwards he was the honorary president. [12] From 1990 to 1995, he was chairman of the Martin-Niemöller-Foundation. [13]
In 1951, Jens married Inge Puttfarcken. [14] [10] They had two sons, Tillmann und Christoph. [14] Jens suffered from dementia, which began to manifest in 2004. He died in 2013 in Tübingen, aged 90. [15]
Source: [12]
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Walter Jens in the German National Library catalogue