Walter Jens

Walter Jens (8 March 1923 – 9 June 2013) was a German philologist, literature historian, critic, university professor and writer.^[1]

Walter Jens
Jens addressing the Academy of Arts, Berlin (2005)
Born	(1923-03-08)8 March 1923 Hamburg, Germany
Died	9 June 2013(2013-06-09) (aged 90)
Occupation(s)	Professor, philologist, writer

He was born in Hamburg, and attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums from 1933 to 1941, when he gained his Abitur,^[2] before studying at the University of Hamburg.^[3]

In the early 1940s, Jens joined the NSDAP.^[4][5] He denied having applied for membership actively and claimed that he had become a member automatically because he was a member of the Hitler Youth and that he never received a membership card.

During World War II, he earned a doctorate in Freiburg with a work about Sophocles' tragedy and habilitated at age 26 with the work Tacitus und die Freiheit (Tacitus and Freedom) at the University of Tübingen.^[6]

From 1950 onward, he was a member of the Group 47.^[7] That year, he had his breakthrough with the novel Nein. Die Welt der Angeklagten.^[8][9]

From 1965 to 1988, Jens held the chair for General Rhetoric at the University of Tübingen,^[10] which was created in order to keep him at the university. Under the pseudonym Momos, he wrote television reviews for Die Zeit.^[11] From 1976 to 1982, he was president of the International PEN center in Germany.^[10] From 1989 to 1997, he was president of the Academy of Arts, Berlin, and afterwards he was the honorary president.^[12] From 1990 to 1995, he was chairman of the Martin-Niemöller-Foundation.^[13]

Personal life

In 1951, Jens married Inge Puttfarcken.^[14][10] They had two sons, Tillmann und Christoph.^[14] Jens suffered from dementia, which began to manifest in 2004. He died in 2013 in Tübingen, aged 90.^[15]

Honours and awards

Source:^[12]

• 1951: Prize of Amis de la Liberté
• 1959: German Youth Literature Prize
• 1968: Lessing Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg
• 1981: Heinrich Heine Prize of the city of Düsseldorf
• 1982: Honorary President of the PEN Centre of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1983: Austrian Merit
• 1984: Adolf Grimme Award
• 1988: Alternative Büchner Prize
• 1988: Theodor Heuss Prize [de] (with his wife Inge Jens)
• 1989: Hermann Sinsheimer Award
• 1990: Austrian State Prize for Cultural Journalism
• 1992: Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
• 1992: Poetry Foundation Visiting Professor at the Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main
• 1997: Bruno Snell sticker for outstanding work in science and society at the University of Hamburg
• 1997: Honorary President of the Berlin University of the Arts
• 1998: Ernst Reuter Medal [de]
• 2002: Ecumenical Sermon Prize (Predigtpreis) awarded by German publisher Verlags für die Deutsche Wirtschaft
• 2003: Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 2003: Corine Literature Prize (with Inge Jens)