Péter Szondi (; 27 May 1929,

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

– 18 October 1971,

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

) was a celebrated literary scholar and philologist, originally from Hungary.

Biography

SzondiFamilyGrave-FlunternCemeteryZurich RomanDeckert17122023

Szondi's father was the Hungarian-Jewish psychiatrist and psychoanalyst

Léopold Szondi Léopold Szondi ( ; March 11, 1893 – January 24, 1986) was a Hungarian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, psychopathologist and Professor of psychology. Founder of the concept of fate analysis. He is known for the now-discredited psychological ...

, who settled in Switzerland after his 1944 release after five months in

Bergen-Belsen Bergen-Belsen (), or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in Northern Germany, northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen, Lower Saxony, Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, ...

. In 1965, Péter became a Professor at the

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public university, public research university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period a ...

, where he led the Institute for General and Comparative Literature. His fields were the

history of literature The history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry that attempt to provide entertainment or education to the reader, as well as the development of the literary techniques used in the communication of these pie ...

and

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

. He committed suicide in 1971 by drowning himself in the Halensee in Berlin on 18 October, leaving unfinished his book about the work of his friend

Paul Celan Paul Celan (; ; born Paul Antschel; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a German-speaking Romanian poet, Holocaust survivor, and literary translation, literary translator. He adopted his pen name (an anagram of the Romanian spelling Ancel ...

, who had killed himself the year before.

Works

* ''Über eine "Freie Universität".'' Suhrkamp, 1973 * ''Die Theorie des bürgerlichen Trauerspiels im 18. Jahrhundert.'' Suhrkamp, 1973 * '' Celan-Studien.'' Suhrkamp, 1972 = ''Celan Studies'', trans.

Susan Bernofsky Susan Bernofsky (born 1966) is an American translator of German-language literature and author. Life and work Susan Bernofsky is best known for bringing the Swiss writer Robert Walser to the attention of the English-speaking world (in a "sec ...

with Harvey Mendelsohn, Stanford University Press, 2003. * '' Hölderlin-Studien.'' Insel, 1967 * ''Satz und Gegensatz.'' Insel, 1964 * ''Der andere Pfeil.'' Insel, 1963 * ''Versuch über das Tragische.'' Insel, 1961 * ''Theorie des modernen Dramas.'' Suhrkamp, 1956 * "Hope in the Past: On Walter Benjamin", reprinted in Benjamin, W. (trans. Howard Eiland), ''Berlin Childhood Around 1900'', 2006, Belknap Press arvard UP

References

External links

Peter Szondi and Critical Hermeneutics
an issue of ''

Telos Telos (; ) is a term used by philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause of a natural organ or entity, or of human art. ''Telos'' is the root of the modern term teleology, the study of purposiveness or of objects with a view to their aims, ...

'' (140, Fall 2007) 1929 births 1971 deaths Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivors Comparative literature academics Academic staff of the Free University of Berlin Hungarian Jews Writers from Budapest Suicides by drowning in Germany Suicides in West Germany Hungarian emigrants to Germany 1971 suicides {{Hungary-academic-bio-stub