Fritz Alwin Breithaupt


Fritz Breithaupt is a scholar and critic in the fields of German literature, intellectual history, and cognitive science. He is Provost Professor of Germanic Studies and Cognitive Science and chair of the Department of Germanic Studies at Indiana University Bloomington.

Career

Fritz Breithaupt graduated from the Universität Hamburg in 1991, and received both an MA and PhD in Germanic Studies from Johns Hopkins University. He has been teaching at Indiana University, Bloomington since 1996, since 2010 as a full professor of Germanic Studies, an adjunct professor of Comparative Literature, and an affiliate professor of Cognitive Science. He co-founded the European Union Center at Indiana University in 2005 and served as its co-director until 2007. In Germany, he is most well known outside of academic circles as a columnist for ZEIT Campus magazine and the author of the recurring feature "Frag den Prof".
His academic research focuses on German literary history from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, with particular emphasis on such authors as Goethe, Lessing, Kleist, Benjamin, Nietzsche, Derrida, and Celan. In particular, his work on Goethe's novel Elective Affinities has been compared to Walter Benjamin's. In 2009–10, he was the distinguished Remak Scholar of Indiana University. He has twice won the grant of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, which is "granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future." His 2017 book on the dark sides of empathy offers an analysis of Donald Trump's technique to draw empathy to himself. The book appeared on the German bestseller list in February 2017.

Selected publications

Books

Jenseits der Bilder: Goethes Politik der Wahrnehmung, 2000 Der Ich-Effekt des Geldes: Zur Geschichte einer Legitimationsfigur, 2008 Kulturen der Empathie, 2009 Culturas de la Empatía, 2011 Kultur der Ausrede, 2012 Die dunklen Seiten der Empathie, 2017

Edited volumes

Empathie und Erzählung, 2010 Narrative Empathy : special issue of Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, September 2008Goethe and the Ego, special section of Goethe Yearbook XI, 2002Goethe and Wittgenstein: Seeing the Worlds Unity in its Variety, Wittgenstein Studies 5, 2002

Articles and Essays

  • "A Three-Person Model of Empathy” in: Emotion Review 4, 2012
  • “Von Gott gerufen werden: Narration und Ausrede,” in Stefan Börnchen, Georg Mein, Martin Roussel, Eds., Namen, Ding, Referenzen, 2012
  • “The Birth of Narrative from the Spirit of the Excuse. A Speculation,” in: Poetics Today 32, 2011
  • “How is Empathy Possible? Four Models,” forthcoming in: Paula Leverage, Howard Mancing, Richard Schweickert, Jennifer Marston William, Eds., Theory of Mind and Literature
  • “How I feel your Pain: Lessing’s Mitleid, Goethe’s Anagnorisis, Fontane’s Quiet Perversion,” in: Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, 2008
  • “The Invention of Trauma in German Romanticism,” in: Critical Inquiry, 2005
  • “The Culture of Images: Goethe’s Elective Affinities,” in: Monatshefte 92.3, 2000