In Memoriam: Gunter H. Hertling

Gunter H. Hertling, Professor Emeritus of Germanics and well-known scholar of 19^th-Century German Literature, died on Sunday, January 19, 2014.

Professor Hertling grew up in Germany, where he received his secondary education. In 1948, he came to the United States. After a few years in Pasadena, he sought his undergraduate degree at UC-Berkeley where he majored in Comparative Zoology with a minor in History. He earned his Ph.D. at Berkeley with a doctoral dissertation on the work of Ricarda Huch. Hertling then joined the faculty of the Department of Germanics at the University of Washington where he taught, published, and served the department and university for nearly fifty years before his full retirement in 2006. He was a highly active member of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association that he served as member of its Executive Committee and as Second Vice President, Vice President, and President (1995-1996). He was also an active member of many other professional organizations in the United States and abroad.

Hertling is the author of numerous scholarly articles and several books on German, Austrian, and Swiss writers, including Adalbert Stifter, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Theodor Fontane, Theodor Storm, Franz Grillparzer, Gottfried Keller, Georg Büchner, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and others. His books, Adalbert Stifters Essays “Wien und die Wiener” (1841-1844) als verhaltenspsychologische “Studien”  impressionistischen Kolorits (2005), Poetische Wirklichkeitsgestaltungen. Essays zum Erzählwerk Gottfried Kellers und Conrad Ferdinand Meyers (2007), Zwischen Imagination und Realität: Gottfried Kellers ästhetische (Un)Vereinbarkeiten in der Landschafts- und Erzählmalerei seines “Grünen Heinrich” (II: 1879/80) and Stifter-Studien. Essays zu Adalbert Stifters humanistischen Ideengut (2012), have impacted the work of German and American scholars of German literature, culture, and thought.