Paul Michael Lützeler

Paul Michael Lutzeler (born November 4, 1943 in Doveren, Heinsberg, Germany) is a German-American scholar of German studies and comparative literature. He teaches as Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis.

Lutzeler studied German and English Literature, Philosophy and History in Berlin, Edinburgh, Vienna and Munich. In 1968 he emigrated to the United States and in 1972 he defended his dissertation at Indiana University in Bloomington. In 1973 he moved to St. Louis, where he became a professor at Washington University. He was Chair of the Washington University Faculty Senate Council from 1993 to 1995. In 1983 he founded the European Studies Program at the Washington University, of which he was in charge for 20 years. In 1985 he founded the Max Kade Center for Contemporary German Literature, which he still chairs. Since 1985 he has been inviting an author and a critic from one of the German-speaking countries every year to St. Louis for teaching and researching. In 2002 he founded the yearbook Gegenwartsliteratur. A German Studies Yearbook of which he is Editor in Chief with Thomas Kniesche (Brown University) as Associate Editor. Lutzeler is also engaged in exchange programs between Washington University and different European and Asian universities. He was guest professor in Princeton, Tübingen, Graz, Mainz, Greifswald, Freiburg, New Delhi, Beijing, Madrid, and Tokyo among others. He taught block seminars at universities in Melbourne, Pavia, Guadalajara, Jerusalem and Zadar.

Lutzeler is President of the IAB (Internationaler Arbeitskreis Hermann Broch), president of the AFM (American Friends of the German Literary Archives in Marbach am Neckar and was from 2005 to 2010 Vice-President of Internationale Vereinigung für Germanistik. He is a corresponding member of two academies in Germany: The Academy of Science and Literature, and the Northrhine-Westfalian Academy of Science and Art and also a member of the Academia Europaea. He was a member of the strategy commission of the Wissenschaftsrat der Bundesrepublik Deutschland from 2011-2016, and he is a member of the German PEN Club. Since 2015, he has also been a member of the Executive Committee of Gesellschaft für interkulturelle Germanistik. Lutzeler is a German and American citizen and lives in St. Louis. He is married and has two adult children.

Lutzeler's main research interests are contemporary German literature, the literary discourse about Europe, German speaking Exile-Literature in the U.S., and German and European Romanticism. Lutzeler is an expert for the Austro-American exile-author Hermann Broch, whose works he edited and whose biography he has written. Lutzeler also published essays and books about the discourses of postmodernism, postcolonialism, continentalization, and globalization. Several of his works were translated into foreign languages. He also writes for German newspapers and magazines like Die Zeit, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Die Welt, Frankfurter Rundschau, the Neue Rundschau and the Merkur.

• The DAAD Prize of the German Studies Association for the Broch biography
• South West Broadcasting (Südwestrundfunk) List of Best Books for the Broch edition Der Tod im Exil
• Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
• Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1st class
• Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria
• Goethe Medal (2004)
• Outstanding Educator Award of the American Association of Teachers of German
• Honorary Membership of the American Association of Teachers of German
• Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award of Washington University in St. Louis
• Research Award of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
• The Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award of Washington University in St. Louis
• Award for International Exchange of the DAAD Alumni Association USA

• "Reply to a parliamentary question" (pdf) (in German). p. 1760. Retrieved 27 November 2012. 

• Fulbright Foundation
• Woodrow Wilson Foundation
• Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst
• American Council of Learned Societies
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
• Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
• Zentrum für interdisziplinaere Forschungen, Bielefeld
• Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart
• Humanities Research Center, Canberra
• Indiana Institute for Advanced Study, Bloomington
• Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg, Greifswald
• Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Essen
• Berlin Kolleg für vergleichende Geschichte Europas
• Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
• Internationales Kolleg Morphomata der Universitaet zu Köln

• Michael Kessler et al. (ed.): Hermann Broch - Neue Studien. Festschrift für Paul Michael Lützeler zum 60. Geburtstag. Stauffenburg, Tübingen 2003 (with bibliography Paul Michael Luetzeler)
• Mark W. Rectanus (ed.): Über Gegenwartsliteratur/About Contemporary Literature. Festschrift für Paul Michael Lützeler zum 65. Geburtstag. Bielefeld, Aisthesis 2008 (with bibliography Paul Michael Luetzeler).
• Peter Hanenberg und Isabel Capeloa Gil (ed.): Der literarische Europa-Diskurs. Festschrift für Paul Michael Lützeler zum 70. Geburtstag. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013. (with bibliography Paul Michael Luetzeler).