Bernd Witte

Bernd Witte (born 1942 in Idar-Oberstein) is a literary scholar. He studied German literature, classical Greek studies, and philosophy, earned a doctorate, and completed his habilitation in 1976 with a study of Walter Benjamin’s literary criticism. From 1994 to 2010, he taught modern German literature at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Witte has published extensively on Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Walter Benjamin, and Franz Kafka. His major works include “Walter Benjamin – Der Intellektuelle als Kritiker,” “Goethe – Das Individuum der Moderne schreiben,” and “Jüdische Tradition und literarische Moderne.” He also edited, among other projects, collected editions of works by C. F. Gellert and Franz Hessel and co-edited the “Goethe-Handbuch.”