Helga W. Kraft (born in Berlin, Germany), is a German-American Professor of Germanic Studies, Emerita.
Helga W. Kraft (born in Berlin, Germany), is a German-American Professor of Germanic Studies, Emerita.
 | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(August 2023) |
Kraft grew up in East-Berlin, Germany, but soon relocated to Western Germany; she emigrated to the US in 1958. She pursued German Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained the Ph.D. in 1970. Subsequently Kraft held tenure track positions at Westminster College, Pennsylvania; University of Kansas; Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL; the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL; the University of Illinois at Chicago.
In addition to scholarly research and teaching (she received Teacher of the Year award twice), she organised teacher workshops, established various faculty and student exchange programs with German universities, and promoted German culture in the US through initiating conferences, film series, exhibits, and lectures. She worked with the Goethe Institut and German Consulates in New York, Chicago and Atlanta and received an Award for Distinguished Service in the International Field from the German Consulate, Atlanta.
As a director of Women’s Studies (1990 – 1995), she founded the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research at the University of Florida; as a full professor she headed the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago (1997-2004). For three years she was active as the editor of the Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature and Culture (2005-2007). Since 2010 she has been Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
She was married to economist Dr. Richard H. P. Kraft (†) and has one daughter. After her official retirement in 2010 she moved to Berlin, Germany, where she now continues her research.
Focus on (1) general Germanic studies, i.e. books and articles on Goethe, Kleist, and Canetti; (2) drama of German speaking countries, i.e. books and articles on women dramatists and plays, xenophobia on the German stage; (3) gender theory and women’s studies, i.e. articles and book chapters on Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer, Ida Hahn-Hahn, Elsa Bernstein, Elisabeth Langgässer, Ingeborg Drewitz, Christa Wolf, Gerlind Reinshagen, Elfriede Jelinek, Marlene Streeruwitz, Herta Müller. (4) Applied linguistics, i.e. a basic German textbook for U.S. college students, articles on teaching methodology.
Books
Flight and Displacement. Representations of World War II Refugee Experiences in Memoirs, Fiction, and Film. Editor and contributor. Coeditor Martha Wallach, Lewiston, NY: Mellen Press, 2012. [1]
Eine Welt aus Sprache. Die Werke von Gerlind Reinshagen. Eine kritische Anthologie. Editor and contributor. Mit einer Einführung und einer kritischen Betrachtung von Reinshagens Gesamtwerk. Coeditor: Therese Hoernigk, Berlin: Verlag Theater der Zeit, 2007. [2]
From Fin de Siècle to Theresienstadt. The Works and Life of Elsa Porges-Bernstein. Editor and contributor. Coeditor: D. Lorenz. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. [3]
Writing against Boundaries. Nationality, Ethnicity and Gender in the German-speaking Context. Coeditor Barbara Kosta, Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi Press, 2003. 223 pp. [4]
Ein Haus aus Sprache: Dramatikerinnen und das andere Theater, Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 1996, 248 pp. Monograph. [5]
Mütter – Töchter – Frauen. Weiblichkeitsbilder in der Literatur. Editor and contributor. Coeditor: Elke Liebs, Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag 1993, 346 pp. [6]
Die Welt des Klanges. Musikalische Zeichen in Heinrich von Kleists Werken. Munich: Fink Verlag, 1976, 183 pp. Monograph. [7]
Auf Deutsch, Kompetenz durch kommunikatives Lernen A First Year College Text. With Workbook, Instructors’ Manual, und Computer Program. Coauthor: Barbara Kosta. Englewood: Prentice Hall, 1991. 483 pp.
Recent articles and chapter
"Xenophobia and the Stranger as Vampire in Efriede Jelinek‘s and Nikolas Mahler‘s „Der fremde! störenfried der ruhe eines sommerabends der ruhe eines friedhofs.“ A Slapstick Play of the Mind." In progress. Publication 2024.
„Die Macht der Überwachung: Marlene Streeruwitz.“ Die Schmerzmacherin. schreibt Kafka neu.“ Journal of Austrian Studies", Volume 55, Number 1 , 2022, pp. 25–51.
„Kafka in Comics. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Moritz Stetters Das Urteil.“ Colloquia Germanica, Vol. 48, No. 4, Themenheft: German Comics. 2016, pp. 293–316.
Milo Rau as Influencer. A New Realism in Theater, Theater - Yale’s Journal of Criticism, Plays, & Reportage. Vol. 51:2, 2021. 39-47.
"Provocations for the Future. Gender Studies and Wissenschaftlichkeit in Germany." Women in German Yearbook, Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture. 2014, Vol. 30, p. 107-124.
“Mächtige Männer in der Krise. Kreuzungen. Von Marlene Streeruwitz.“ Frauenphantasien. Der imaginierte Mann im Werk von Film- und Buchautorinnen. Ed. Renate Möhrmann. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 2014. 548-563.
“Herta Müller,“ Berühmte Frauen 2013.” Ed. Luise Pusch. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2012.
"Goethes Farbenlehre und Das Märchen -- Farbmagie oder -wissenschaft?“ In: Die Farben imaginierter Welten, Zur Kulturgeschichte ihrer Codierung in Literatur und Kunst vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Monika Schausten. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012.
“Christa Wolf’s Himmelsrichtungen.” In: Konzept Osteuropa. Der „Osten“ als Konstrukt der Fremd- und Eigenbestimmung in deutschsprachigen Texten des 19. Und 20. Jahrhunderts. Eds. Dagmar Lorenz and Ingrid Spörk. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. 2011.
„Das Theater als moralische Anstalt? Deutsche Identität und die Migrantenfrage auf der Bühne.“ In Geschlechter Spiel Räume: Dramatik, Theater, Performance und Gender. Eds. Franziska Schlössler and Gabi Pailer. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2010.
Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. His best known works are the theatre plays Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, The Broken Jug, Amphitryon and Penthesilea, and the novellas Michael Kohlhaas and The Marquise of O. Kleist died by suicide together with a close female friend who was terminally ill.
Katja Lange-Müller is a German writer living in Berlin. Her works include several short stories and novellas, radio dramas, and dramatic works.
Hermann Beckh was a pioneering German Tibetologist and prominent promoter of anthroposophy.
Elfriede Gerstl was an Austrian author and Holocaust-survivor. Gerstl, who was Jewish, was born in Vienna, where her father worked as a dentist.
Terézia Mora is a German Hungarian writer, screenwriter and translator.
Upper German is a family of High German dialects spoken primarily in the southern German-speaking area.
Ottmar Ette is Professor of Romance languages and Comparative literature at University of Potsdam.
Andreas Urs Sommer is a German philosopher of Swiss origin. He specializes in the history of philosophy and its theory, ethics, philosophy of religion, and Skepticism. His historical studies center on the philosophy of Enlightenment and Nietzsche, but they also deal with Kant, Max Weber, Pierre Bayle, Jonathan Edwards, and others.
Jutta Lampe was a German actress on stage and in film. She was for 30 years a leading actress at the Schaubühne founded in Berlin by her husband Peter Stein, where she played both classical theatre such as Alkmene in Kleist's Amphitryon, and world premieres including Robert Wilson's Orlando for one actor, and roles that Botho Strauß created for her. She was also engaged at the Vienna Burgtheater and the Schauspielhaus Zürich. She appeared in more than twenty films from 1963, including lead roles in films by Margarethe von Trotta. Lampe was named Actress of the Year by Theater heute several times. Other awards included the Gertrud-Eysoldt-Ring and the Joana Maria Gorvin Prize for her life's work.
Erhard Domay was a German Protestant theologian, mainly notable as the author and editor of several works on liturgy.
Karin Flaake is a German sociologist and professor (retired) at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. Her publications on the adolescence of young women and men are part of the literature of socio-psychologically oriented gender research. Another focus of her work is on the chances of changing gender relations in families.
Gisela Kraft was a German author and poet. She also undertook extensive work as a literary translator from Turkish to German.
Gerhard Storz was the son of a Lutheran pastor from Württemberg who at various stages distinguished himself in theatre productions, as a scholar, an educationalist, a politician and an author-journalist, sometimes pursuing one career at a time and sometimes several in combination. Throughout his adult life he liked to see himself as a "language therapist". "Human speech seems to have been encoded, sealed into formulaic structures, and pressed into service for mechanistic operations", he once wrote.
Alfred Kirchner is a German actor, theatre director and theatre manager who is based in Berlin. He worked at theatres such as Theater Bremen, Schauspielhaus Bochum, the Burgtheater in Vienna and the Staatliche Schauspielbühnen Berlin, before turning to freelance work. He has staged productions in Europe and North America, including several world premieres of both drama and opera. He directed the premiere of Martin Walser's Ein Kinderspiel in Stuttgart in 1971, the U.S. premiere of Henze's We Come to the River at the Santa Fe Opera in 1984, and the premiere of Hans Zender's Stephen Climax at the Oper Frankfurt in 1986. In 1994, he staged Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival.
Peter Ludwig Gülke is a German conductor and musicologist.
Norbert Miller is a German scholar of literature and art. He was professor of literary studies at the Technische Universität Berlin from 1973 and retired in 2006.
Ilma Rakusa is a Swiss writer and translator. She translates French, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Hungarian into German.
Semele is a singspiel libretto by Friedrich Schiller, first published in the Musen-Almanach Anthologie auf das Jahr 1782. Schiller edited a pirated edition in 1800, but decided not to republish it. After his death, his friend and patron Christian Gottfried Körner published the revised edition in the fifth volume of the series Theater von Schiller, published by Cotta-Verlag.
Max Alfred Lehmann, better known by his artist name Alred Lemm, was a German expressionist narrator, pacifist and essayist, who in many of his writings campaigned for a renewal of Judaism in Germany by turning to Eastern Judaism according to Martin Buber.
Peter Uwe Hohendahl is a literary and intellectual historian and theorist. He served as the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of German Studies at Cornell University, where he is now a professor emeritus.