Jakob Hessing

Jakob Hessing (born 1944) is a German writer, Germanist, and translator. The son of a Jewish family, he grew up in Berlin and emigrated to Israel in 1964. From 1970 to 1978, he edited the German-language edition of the journal Ariel on behalf of the Israeli Foreign Ministry; from 1993 to 1999, he edited the Jewish Almanac. Hessing taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1992 and headed its German Studies department until his retirement in 2012. He published novels, essays, and translations from Hebrew. His scholarly books include studies of Else Lasker-Schüler, Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, and Paul Celan.