Dr Herman Beyersdorf
Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Arts
Qualifications
BA (Hons), PhD (New England)
Contact
| Email: | hbeyersd@une.edu.au |
| Room: | E11 223 |
| Phone: | 02 6773 3042 (or +61 2 6773 3042 overseas) |
| Mobile: | 0408 209 451 |
Dr Herman Beyersdorf was an Associate Professor of German at UNE until his retirement in 2008. Following his retirement he accepted an appointment as Adjunct Associate Professor, and from 2011 till the present he is once again working on a full-time contract, replacing a colleague in German currently on leave without pay. Dr Beyersdorf was born near Nuremberg in Germany. He studied at the University of New England and the Free University of Berlin, receiving a PhD 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. Dr Beyersdorf was Head of the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics from 2004 to 2007.
Apart from his extensive teaching, research and administrative duties in the German discipline in the School of Arts, Dr 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 also served as an elected academic staff member of the UNE Council from 1993-1996, and again from 2000 to 2008. He has been involved in local government since 1991, and is now serving his sixth term as a Councillor of the Armidale Dumaresq Council, and is currently Deputy Mayor.
Research interests
Dr Beyersdorf's research has focused primarily on the post-war German novel. His PhD dissertation investigated the theme of immaturity and political protest in the works of Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll and Siegfried Lenz.
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.
So far Dr 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.
He has been a guest researcher and given public lectures in this area at a number of overseas universities, including the Universities of Münster, Dortmund and Oldenburg in Germany and the University of Szczecin in Poland, and has given papers at international conferences at the Universities of Freiburg and Liverpool, as well as at numerous conferences in Australia and New Zealand.
Publications
1. Book:
Beyersdorf, H.E., Erinnerte Heimat. Ostpreußen im literarischen Werk von Arno Surminski, Studien der Forschungsstelle Ostmitteleuropa, Band 24, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz 1999, 217 pp.
2. Book Chapters:
Beyersdorf, H.E., "Kein schöner Land. Der Roman der Wende?" in Unravelling the Labyrinth. Decoding Text and Language. Festschrift for Eric Lowson Marson, ed. Kerry Dunne and Ian Campbell, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 1997, pp. 159-174.
Beyersdorf, H.E., “Günter Grass' Im Krebsgang und die Vertreibungsdebatte im Spiegel der Presse”, in: Wende des Erinnerns? Geschichtskonstruktionen in der deutschen Literatur nach 1989, ed. Barbara Beßlich, Katharina Grätz and Olaf Hildebrand, Erich Schmidt, Berlin 2006, pp. 157-168.
Beyersdorf, H.E., “Das kleine Dorf und der große Krieg. Arno Surminskis Roman Vaterland ohne Väter”, in: Ostpreußen – Westpreußen – Danzig. Eine historische Literaturlandschaft, ed. Jens Stüben R. Oldenbourg Verlag, München 2007, pp. 589-603.
3. Articles:
Beyersdorf, H.E., "The Narrator as Artful Deceiver: Aspects of Narrative Perspective in Die Blechtrommel", Germanic Review, 55, 1980, pp. 129-138.
Beyersdorf, H.E., "The Great Refusal in Heinrich Böll's Gruppenbild mit Dame", Germanic Review, 58, 1983, pp. 153-157.
H.E. Beyersdorf, "'... den Osten verloren'. Das Thema der Vertreibung in Romanen von Grass, Lenz und Surminski", Weimarer Beiträge, 38. Jg., Heft 1, 1992, pp. 46-67.
Beyersdorf, H.E., "Arno Surminski, Chronist des verlorenen Ostens", Deutsche Studien, 33, 1996, Heft 129, pp. 14-38.
Beyersdorf, H.E., "Verneigung vor dem Leser: Gespräch mit dem Schriftsteller Arno Surminski", Deutsche Bücher, 27, 1, 1997, pp. 1-17.
Beyersdorf, H.E., "Vertreibung aus der Kindheit: Verlust der Heimat in Horst Bieneks Gleiwitzer Tetralogie", Deutsche Studien, 34, 1997, Heft 133/134, pp. 75-89.
Beyersdorf, H.E., "Geborgenheit und Angst: die Bedeutung der 'vier Röcke' und der 'Schwarzen Köchin' in der Blechtrommel", Colloquia Germanica Stetinensia, Nr. 8, 1999, pp. 123-141.
Beyersdorf, H.E., “Von der Blechtrommel bis zum Krebsgang: Günter Grass als Schriftsteller der Vertreibung”, Weimarer Beiträge, 48. Jg., Heft 4, 2002, pp. 568-593.
Beyersdorf, H.E., “’die-Heimat, verloren -.-‘: ‘Vertreibungsliteratur’ and the Younger Generation(s)”, AUMLA, Journal of the Australasian Universities Language & Literature Association, 108, November 2007, pp. 93-109.
Beyersdorf, H.E., “The Waffen-SS and Other Revelations in Günter Grass’ Beim Häuten der Zwiebel”, AUMLA, Journal of the Australasian Universities Language & Literature Association, Special Issue, Refereed Proceedings of the 2007 Conference, December 2007, pp. 175-188.
Beyersdorf, H.E., “Das Polenbild in den Werken Arno Surminskis”, Seminar, A Journal of Germanic Studies, 45:3, September 2009, pp. 209-222.
Beyersdorf, H.E., “The Banality of Evil: Arno Surminski’s Die Vogelwelt von Auschwitz”, AUMLA, Journal of the Australasian Universities Language & Literature Association, Special Issue, Refereed Proceedings of the 2009 AULLA Conference, December 2009, pp. 205-218.
Beyersdorf, H.E., “The Question of German Guilt: the Palmnicken Massacre in Arno Surminski‘s Winter Fünfundvierzig oder Die Frauen von Palmnicken”, AUMLA, Journal of the Australasian Universities Language & Literature Association, Special Issue, Refereed Proceedings of the 2011 AULLA Conference, April 2012, pp. 35-44.