Reinhard Lettau

Who was Reinhard Lettau?

Reinhard Lettau was a German-American writer. He never used his middle name, Adolf, if he could avoid it. He emigrated to the US in the middle of the 1950s and was a professor for German Literature at the University of California, San Diego from 1967. He was an active member of the Group 47. He gave incendiary speeches at the Freie Universität Berlin denouncing the Springer Press. He was thereupon expelled from West Germany because he was a foreigner—he carried an American passport.

He returned to Germany in 1991 after the German reunification. He received the War Blind Prize for radio plays in 1979, the Berlin Literature Prize in 1993, and the Bremen Literature Prize in 1995.

He had studied German, philosophy and literature in Heidelberg and at Harvard. His dissertation at Harvard in 1960 was titled "Utopie und Roman; Untersuchungen zur Form des deutschen utopischen Romans im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert.", about utopian novels in the 20th century.

He was a member of the PEN-Zentrum in Germany, the Germany Academy of Art. He was "Poet in Residence" at the University of Essen in German in the winter term 1979/1980.