# Paul Michael Lützeler

Paul Michael Lutzeler (born November 4, 1943, in Doveren, Heinsberg, Germany) is a German-American scholar of German studies and comparative literature. He is the Rosa May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis.

## Life

Lutzeler studied German and English Literature, Philosophy and History in Berlin, Edinburgh, Vienna and Munich. In 1968 he emigrated to the United States and in 1972 he defended his dissertation at Indiana University Bloomington. In 1973 he moved to St. Louis, where he became a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He was Chair of the Washington University Faculty Senate Council from 1993 to 1995. In 1983 he founded the European Studies Program at Washington University, of which he was in charge for 20 years. In 1985 he founded the Max Kade Center for Contemporary German Literature, which he chaired until 2022. He chaired the German department from 1983 to 1988. Frtom 1985 until 2022 he was inviting an author and a critic from one of the German-speaking countries every year to St. Louis for teaching and researching. In 2002 he founded the yearbook Gegenwartsliteratur. A German Studies Yearbook of which he was the Editor in Chief until 2020. Lutzeler was also engaged in exchange programs between Washington University and different European, American and Asian universities. From 2010 to 2019 he worked on the committee of the transatlantic postdoc exchange funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. He was guest professor in Princeton University, Tübingen, Graz, Mainz, Greifswald, Freiburg, New Delhi, Beijing, Madrid, and Tokyo among others. He taught block seminars at universities in Melbourne, Pavia, Guadalajara, Jerusalem and Zadar.
Lutzeler is president of the IAB (Internationaler Arbeitskreis Hermann Broch), president of the AFM (American Friends of the German Literary Archives in Marbach am Neckar from 2012 to 2019 and was from 2005 to 2010 vice-president of Internationale Vereinigung für Germanistik. He is a corresponding member of two academies in Germany: The Academy of Science and Literature, and the Northrhine-Westfalian Academy of Science and Art and also a member of the Academia Europaea. He was a member of the strategy commission of the Wissenschaftsrat der Bundesrepublik Deutschland from 2011 to 2016, and he is a member of the PEN Centre Germany. Since 2015, he has also been a member of the executive committee of Gesellschaft für interkulturelle Germanistik. Lutzeler is a German and American citizen and lives in St. Louis. He is married and has two adult children.

## Work

Lutzeler's main research interests are contemporary German literature, the literary discourse about Europe, German speaking Exile-Literature in the U.S., and German and European Romanticism. Lutzeler is an expert for the Austro-American exile-author Hermann Broch, whose works he edited and whose biography he has written. He also published essays and books about the discourses of postmodernism, postcolonialism, continentalization, and globalization. Several of his works were translated into foreign languages. He also wrote for German newspapers and magazines like Die Zeit, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel, Die Welt, Frankfurter Rundschau, the Neue Rundschau and the Merkur.

## Awards

* The DAAD Prize of the German Studies Association for the Broch biography
* South West Broadcasting (Südwestrundfunk) List of Best Books for the Broch edition Der Tod im Exil
* Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
* Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
* Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria
* Goethe Medal of the Goethe Institute
* Outstanding Educator Award of the American Association of Teachers of German
* Honorary Membership of the American Association of Teachers of German
* Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award of Washington University in St. Louis
* Research Award of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
* The Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award of Washington University in St. Louis
* Award for International Exchange of the DAAD Alumni Association USA
* Friedrich-Gundolf-Preis of the German Academy for Language and Literature
* Dr. h.c. (Doctor of Humanities) from Washington University in St. Louis

## Grants

* Fulbright Foundation
* Woodrow Wilson Foundation
* Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst
* American Council of Learned Societies
* John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
* Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Research Award)
* Zentrum für interdisziplinaere Forschungen, Bielefeld
* Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart
* Humanities Research Center, Canberra
* Indiana Institute for Advanced Study, Bloomington
* Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg, Greifswald
* Berlin Kolleg für vergleichende Geschichte Europas
* Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
* Internationales Kolleg Morphomata (Institute for Advanced Studies) der Universität zu Köln
* Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften (IFK) Wien
* Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (KWI), Essen