Victor Lange (13 July 1908 — 29 June 1996) was a renowned

Germanist German studies is an academic field that researches, documents and disseminates German language, German literature, literature, and culture in its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies therefore often focus on Culture ...

, known primarily for his work at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

Biography

Born in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

, Germany, he obtained his M.A. degree from the University College of the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

in 1931, and his Ph.D. from the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

in 1934 with a dissertation entitled "Die lyrische Anthologie im England des 18. Jahrhunderts (1670–1780)." He taught at Toronto in the 1930s and, from 1938 onwards, at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

. He moved to

in 1957, where he was the founding chairman of both the German Department and the Department of Comparative Literature. As the John N. Woodhull Professor of Modern Languages, he remained at Princeton until his retirement in 1977. He was twice the recipient of

Guggenheim Fellowships Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

, in 1950 and 1967. From 1962, he held an honorary professorship 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 ...

. In 1959, he was honored with the Commanders' Cross by the German Government. Among the other honors conferred on him were the Goethe Gold Medal in Frankfurt in 1965 and, in 1966, the Friedrich Gundolph Prize of the

Deutsche Akademie The Academy for the Scholarly Research and Fostering of Germandom (''die Akademie zur Wissenschaftlichen Erforschung und Pflege des Deutschtums''), or German Academy (''die Deutsche Akademie'', ), was a German cultural institute founded in 1925 at ...

. He received the University of California's Chancellor's Citation in 1985 and in 1993 the Weimar

Goethe Medal The Goethe Medal, also known as the Goethe-Medaille, is a yearly prize given by the Goethe-Institut honoring non-Germans "who have performed outstanding service for the German language and for international cultural relations". It is an offici ...

in Gold. In 1966, he arranged the meeting of the

Gruppe 47 Gruppe 47 (Group 47) was a group of participants in German writers' meetings, invited by Hans Werner Richter between 1947 and 1967. The meetings served the dual goals of literary criticism as well as the promotion of young, unknown authors. In a ...

in Princeton and, as President of the International Verein Germanstein he hosted their meeting in Princeton in 1970. His most important published work is ''The Classical Age of German Literature, 1740–1815'' (New York, Holmes & Meier, 1982). An exhaustive bibliography of his writings was published posthumously in the ''Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik'' (a Peter Lang serial). He taught as Guest Professor in many universities:

Melbourne University The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state of Victoria. Its ...

(Australia), Berlin, Heidelberg, Munich, the

University of New Zealand A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

(Auckland), the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

(at Davis, Berkeley, and San Diego), and lectured widely. He was the founding president of the

Goethe Society of North America The Goethe Society of North America (GSNA) was founded in December 1979 in San Francisco as a non-profit organization dedicated to the encouragement of research on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and his age. The Goethe Society has allied ...

(in which he served from 1980 to 1989).

Death

He died of heart failure on 29 June 1996 in

Princeton, New Jersey The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...

at the age of 87.

References

"Victor Lange, 87, Scholar of German" (obituary) _New York Times_ July 5, 1996. pg. D8
*Lange, Victor. The Classical Age of German Literature 1740-1825 (New York: Holmes and Meier), 1982. *Jahrbuch fur Internationale Germanistik (Bern: Peter Lang), 1997, vol. 29, pp. 14–25 {{DEFAULTSORT:Lange, Victor 1908 births 1996 deaths Leipzig University alumni University of Toronto alumni Cornell University Department of German faculty Princeton University Department of German faculty Academic staff of the University of Toronto German Germanists American Germanists Goethe scholars Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany German emigrants to the United States