Aleida Assmann

Aleida Assmann (born 1947 in Bethel near Bielefeld, Germany) is a German literary and cultural scholar. She studied English and Egyptology in Heidelberg and Tübingen, earned her doctorate in 1977, and completed her habilitation in 1992. From 1993 until her retirement, she taught English and general literary studies at the University of Konstanz; she also held visiting professorships and conducted research at universities in the United States and Europe. Together with her husband, the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, she founded the working group “Archaeology of Literary Communication” and helped establish the concept of “cultural memory” as an interdisciplinary field of research. Her major works include “Erinnerungsräume,” “Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit,” and “Das neue Unbehagen an der Erinnerungskultur.” She received numerous honors, including the Max Planck Research Award, the Balzan Prize, and, jointly with Jan Assmann, the 2018 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.