Associate Professor Herman Beyersdorf
Head of School, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Qualifications
BA (Hons), PhD (New England)
Contact
| Email: | hbeyersd@une.edu.au |
| Room: | E11 110 |
| Phone: | 02 6773 3042 (or +61 2 6773 3042 overseas) |
Associate Professor Herman Beyersdorf was born near Nuremberg in Germany. He studied at the University of New England and the Free University of Berlin, receiving a Ph.D. from UNE for his dissertation on aspects of the post-war German novel.
After a temporary lectureship in German at the University of Queensland and three years in the Diplomatic Service, serving at the Australian Embassy in Berne, Switzerland, he was appointed as Lecturer, later promoted to Senior Lecturer and subsequently to Associate Professor in German Language and Literature at UNE. During this time he has been a guest professor and researcher at a number of overseas universities, including the Universities of Münster, Dortmund and Oldenburg in Germany and the University of Szczecin in Poland.
Apart from his extensive teaching, research and administrative duties in the German discipline in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Associate Professor Beyersdorf has been very active in community activities. He was President of the UNE Branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) from 1992 to 2002. He has been involved as a local government Councillor since 1991, and is currently serving his fourth term as a Councillor of the Armidale Dumaresq Council. He is also serving as an elected academic staff member of the UNE Council from 2000 to 2006.
Research interests
Associate Professor Beyersdorf's research has focussed primarily on the post-war German novel. His Ph.D. dissertation investigated the theme of immaturity and political protest in the works of Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll and Siegfried Lenz. Since then he has published a number of articles on the Nobel Prize winning authors Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll.
For a number of years now he has been concentrating his research on "Vertreibungsliteratur" ("refugee literature"), examining the treatment in contemporary German literature of the loss of the historic German provinces east of the Oder-Neiße Line as a result of the Potsdam Agreement in 1945, and the fate of the millions of German refugees and expellees who fled or were expelled from these former German territories in present-day Poland and Russia.
His research has resulted in Associate Professor Beyersdorf working with a number of German organisations, such as the Deutsch-Osteuropäisches Forum in Düsseldorf, Ost-Akademie in Lüneburg, Stiftung Ostdeutscher Kulturrat in Bonn, the Forschungsstelle Ostmitteleuropa at the University of Dortmund and the Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa at the University of Oldenburg, as well as with Polish colleagues at the University of Szczecin in Poland.
So far Associate Professor Beyersdorf has concentrated on the works of prominent authors in this field such as Günter Grass, Siegfried Lenz, Horst Bienek and Arno Surminski, and has achieved a number of significant publications on these authors. His book "Erinnerte Heimat, Ostpreußen im literarischen Werk von Arno Surminski", Studien der Forschungsstelle Ostmitteleuropa an der Universität Dortmund, Band 24, was published by Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, in March 1999.
In 2002 Associate Professor Beyersdorf was on study leave, and was once again a guest of the Forschungsstelle Ostmitteleuropa at the University of Dortmund as well as of the Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa at the University of Oldenburg. He is continuing his work on "Vertreibungsliteratur", and is currently researching the latest novel by Günter Grass, 'Im Krebsgang' (2002), which deals with the sinking of the 'Wilhelm Gustloff', a ship carrying thousands of refugees, in the Baltic in January 1945.
Associate Professor Beyersdorf gave public lectures on this topic at the Universities of Dortmund, Oldenburg and Freiburg. One contribution has now been published as a longer article in the academic journal "Weimarer Beiträge" in November 2002, while other contributions on "Vertreibungsliteratur" are appearing in book chapters in 2005 and 2006.