It is our sad duty to report that our friend, colleague and former department head, Klaus Petersen, passed away on July 17, 2015.
Klaus completed his Staatsexamen in Hamburg in 1963 and his PhD at UBC in 1974. After teaching in Winnipeg, he returned to UBC to rejoin the then Department of Germanic Studies. He was Head from 1985 to 1990 and a driving force in establishing the Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies. A highly dedicated instructor, his decades of teaching and supervision had a strong and lasting impact on generations of students and colleagues. He retired in 2003 but kept in close touch with department.
A prolific and highly respected scholar, his special area of interest was early twentieth-century German literature, followed in later years by important work on literature and censorship. Among his most important publications are Georg Kaiser: Künstlerbild und Künstlerfigur (1976), Ludwig Rubiner: Eine Einführung mit Textauswahl und Bibliographie (1980), Die “Gruppe 1925″ : Geschichte und Soziologie einer Schriftstellervereinigung (1981), Literatur and Justiz in der Weimarer Republik (1988), Zensur in der Weimarer Republik (1995) and the edited volume Interpreting Censorship in Canada (1999).
The Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies will host an event in honour of Klaus in late August.
