Prof. Dieter Schlenstedt †

Dieter Schlenstedt, born on August 30th, 1932 in Blankenburg, died on May 27th, 2012 in Berlin, studied German language and literature from 1951 to 1955 and then worked as a lecturer at the Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Fakultät at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. From 1963 to 1966 he was editor of the literary magazine Weimarer Beiträge. From 1966 he was a research associate at the Central Institute for Literary History of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, where he served as co-editor of the historical dictionary Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, among other functions. In 1991 Schlenstedt was elected the last president of the PEN Centre (East) and subsequently became a member of the PEN Centre Germany. He also held visiting professorships at the University of Siegen, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.