Jan Philipp Reemtsma

Jan Philipp Reemtsma, born in Bonn in 1952, is a German literary scholar, essayist, and patron of the arts and sciences. He studied German literature and philosophy in Hamburg and earned a doctorate in philology. Reemtsma was Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Hamburg, founded the Arno Schmidt Foundation with Alice Schmidt in 1981, and founded and directed the Hamburg Institute for Social Research until March 2015. He also served as a board member of the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture. His publications include “Falun. Speeches and Essays,” “The Book of the Self,” and “More Than a Champion: On the Style of Boxer Muhammad Ali.” He was a co-editor of the Bargfelder Ausgabe of Arno Schmidt’s works and received, among other honors, the Lessing Prize, the Moses Mendelssohn Prize, and the Weimar Prize.