Jean Améry – a Philosopher of Auschwitz? Seminar

With his collection of essays At the Minds Limits (1966) Jean Améry lay the foundation for what has hitherto been known as the ‘Auschwitz discourse’ in the German speaking world. The paper will endeavour to show how Améry’s legacy has not only found its way into the fictional work of his non-Jewish contemporaries Ingeborg Bachmann and Alfred Andersch, but also profoundly affected the writings of W. G. Sebald and his fellow survivors Primo Levi and Imre Kertész.

All welcome.

The chair for this seminar will be Professor Andrea Reiter

Speaker biography

Irène Heidelberger-Leonard, Prof. em. Université libre de Bruxelles 1980-2009.  Since 2009  Honorary Professorial Research Fellow at Queen Mary College, University of London.  Published books on Jean Améry, Alfred Andersch, Ingeborg Bachmann, Jurek Becker, Thomas Bernhard, Günter Grass,  Ruth Klüger,  W. G. Sebald und Peter Weiss, including

Jean Améry. Revolte in der Resignation. Biographie, (Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2004).  (Einhard-Prize for ‘outstanding European Biography’ 2005).
Translation into French by  Sacha Zilberfarb,  Arles, Actes Sud 2008
Translation into Spanish by Elisa Renau,  Valencia, PUV 2010
Translation into English by Anthea Bell, I.B. Tauris , London,  2010.
Editor of  Jean Améry,  Die Schiffbrüchigen, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 2007 

General Editor of JEAN AMERY, Werke, 9 volumes, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2002-2008. Member of the German Academy for Language and Literature (Darmstadt)
Presently working on a monograph of Imre Kertész.