Jens Rieckmann, noted scholar of German Modernism and long-time professor of German at UW, died Sunday in New Hampshire. He taught at UW for twelve years in the eighties and nineties, and is fondly remembered by both his colleagues and his students.
Rieckmann grew up in Germany and began his studies at the University of Göttingen, where he passed his Staatsexamen in 1971. After coming to the US, he completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1975. He was an assistant professor at the University of Virginia from 1975 to 1981 and a Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard in 1980-81. He taught at the University of Washington from 1981 to 1993 before joining UC Irvine as a full professor in 1993. He taught at UC Irvine for 15 years before retiring in 2008. He received an ACLS research grant for 1983-84 and was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1988.
He is the author of several books, including Der Zauberberg: Eine geistige Autobiographie Thomas Manns (1977), Aufbruch in die Moderne: Die Anfänge des Jungen Wien. Österreichische Literatur und Kritik im Fin de Siècle (1985), Hugo von Hofmannsthal und Stefan George: Signifikanz einer 'Episode' aus der Jahrhundertwende (1997), and was the editor of A Companion to the Works of Stefan George (2005).