Henry H.H. Remak

Honorary Member

Indiana University, Bloomington

Henry H.H. Remak, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Germanic and West European Studies, continues to be active in teaching (Honors College, IU), lecturing, and writing. A native of Berlin and a graduate of the "Collège Français" (Abitur) in Berlin, he pursued undergraduate and graduate studies at the Universities of Bordeaux (Certificat d'Etudes Françaises), Montpellier (Liciencié-ès-Lettres), Indiana University (M.A.), and the University of Chicago (Ph.D.). In 1973, he was awarded the Doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Lille, France, and in 1999 he was named Honorary Professor in the School of Literature and Journalism, University of Sichuan, Chengdu, China. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), The University of Pennsylvania, the University of Lille, the University of Hamburg, and Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India.

He has held Fulbright lectureships (France, Germany, India) and travel grants (Brazil), John Simon Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities year-long research fellowships, has directed a national summer seminar (on the German and European Novella) and a year-long national seminar (on European Romanticism) for the National Endowment for the Humanities, directed (and taught at) the Middlebury College German Language School (Summer) as well as the Indiana University Institute for Advanced Study. He has been an Elected Member of the Council of the Foundation Jean Monnet pour l'Europe, University of Lausanne, since the 1980's, served on the Executive Committee of the International Comparative Literature Association, as President of the Editorial Board of the "Comparative History of Literature in European Languages" (on which he remains active), and as Co-Chair and Representative of American Comparative Literature on the Joint American-Hungarian Commission of the Humanities of ACLS.

He was made a Sagamore of the Wabash (1993). At Indiana University, he served as Dean of the Faculties and Vice-Chancellor of IU-Bloomington from 1969-1974, received the all-university Distinguished Teaching Award in 1962, the all-campus Distinguished Service Award in 1988, "The Year 2000 Alliance of Distinguished and Titled Professors Award for Promotion of Excellence" and Honorary Membership in the Alliance. In 1994, the Indiana University Society for Advanced Study (Institute for Advanced Study) created the "Remak Distinguished Scholar Award," and, in 1977, the "Graduate Student Organization" (GSO) of Indiana University-Bloomington initiated the "Henry H.H. Remak Fellowship" designed to bring promising junior faculty members from other universities to the Bloomington campus for two or three days to interact with our academy-bound graduate students.

IU-Bloomington alumnus and former student of Remak, Larry H. Lee, Fort Wayne, has endowed, in his honor, a professorship (operative in 2002) rotating between Germanic Studies, Comparative Literature, and West European Studies on the Bloomington campus.

Fields of teaching and research: (Germanic Studies): Late XVIIIth to Early XXth Century Fiction, particularly the Novelle; Goethe, Keller, Fontane, Thomas Mann; (Comparative Literature): Principles, Directions, and History of Comparative Literature; European Romanticism and Realism; Franco-German Literary and Cultural Relations; the European and American novella; (West European Studies): Jean Monnet and the European Union.

Office: (812) 855-8307; E-mail: remak@indiana.edu