Professor Gerrit-Jan Berendse

Overview

Gerrit-Jan Berendse was born in the Netherlands in 1959 and studied German language and literature, philosophy and art history at the universities of Utrecht, Göttingen and Frankfort on the Main. PhD in 1990 at Utrecht University on the Sächsische Dichterschule, on GDR poetry in the 1960s and 70s. Teaching positions since 1991 at Dickinson College in Carlisle (Pennsylvania, USA), Utrecht University, the University of Canterbury in Christchurch (New Zealand) and at Cardiff University. Here he started working in what was then called the School of European Studies as Chair of European Culture and Literature in 2001 but retired in 2018 due to ill health.

He is an expert in German speaking poetry and in the link between aesthetics and European terrorism. His publications include Die ‘Sächsische Dichterschule’ (1990), Krawarnewall (1997), Grenz-Fallstudien (1999), Terror and Text (edited with Mark Williams, 2002), Schreiben im Terrordom (2005), Baader-Meinhof Returns (edited with Ingo Cornils, 2008), Vom Aushalten der Extreme (2011), Echoes of Surrealism (2021) and Surrealismus in der DDR (2022). In 2023 he was editor of the prestegious literary journal TEXT+KRITIK on the German writer Adolf Endler (1930-2009).

Prof. Berendse is Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, is corresponding member of the Sächsische Akademie der Künste in Dresden and an experienced research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.