Hans Egon Holthusen was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 lyric poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, essayist, and literary scholar.

Holthusen was born in Rendsburg

Rendsburg

Rendsburg is a town on the River Eider and the Kiel Canal in the northeastern part of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is the capital of the Kreis of Rendsburg-Eckernförde. As of 2006, it had a population of 28,476.-History:...

 the Province of Schleswig-Holstein

Province of Schleswig-Holstein

The Province of Schleswig-Holstein was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1868 to 1946. It was created from the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which had been conquered by Prussia and the Austrian Empire from Denmark in the Second War of Schleswig in 1864...

, the son of a Protestant

Protestantism

Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...

 clergyman. He studied German philology, history, and philosophy at the universities of Tübingen

Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen

Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen is a public university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of Germany's oldest universities, internationally noted in medicine, natural sciences and the humanities. In the area of German Studies it has been ranked first among...

, Berlin

Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

, and Munich

Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich

The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich , commonly known as the University of Munich or LMU, is a university in Munich, Germany...

, gaining reputation as a Rilke scholar with the publication of his Rilkes Sonette an Orpheus: Versuch einer Interpretation in 1937, at the age of 24.

Holthusen was a member of the SS

Schutzstaffel

The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...

 (since 1933) and of the Nazi Party (since 1937). During the Second World War, between 1939 and 1944, he served in the German army. In the early 1960s Holthusen worked at the Goethe-Institut in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, subsequently obtaining a professorship at Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

 in Evanston, Illinois

Evanston, Illinois

Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...

, a post which he held until 1981. In 1960, Mascha Kaléko

Mascha Kaléko

Mascha Kaléko, born Golda Malka Aufen on June 7, 1907 in Chrzanów, Austria ; died January 21, 1975 in Zürich) was a Jewish German language poet.- Biography :Her family moved from Galicia to Germany after World War I....

 refused the Berlin Theodor Fontane Price because Holthusen was a jury member.

Holthusen died in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

.

There exists an unpublished 233-page English-language biography covering the first sixty-seven years of his life or so (he died at the age of 83); a comprehensive bibliography of his works came out posthumously in 2000. His personal papers (including manuscripts, diaries, private correspondence (encompassing more than five thousand letters), genealogical records, and a photographic archive) are preserved at the Library of the University of Hildesheim

University of Hildesheim

The University of Hildesheim was founded in 1978. Its main faculties are educational and social sciences, cultural sciences and aesthetic communications, and information and communication sciences. With around 5000 students currently enrolled, this university is relatively small.Unlike very few...

 (Universitätsbibliothek Hildesheim) in Lower Saxony

Lower Saxony

Lower Saxony is a German state situated in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen states of Germany...

 (‘The Papers of Hans Egon Holthusen’ — Nachlass Hans Egon Holthusen). The Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, holds a sound recording of the lecture on post-war German literature, entitled ‘Crossing the Zero Point’, which he delivered in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress on January 25, 1960 (and which he begins by mentioning ‘the German catastrophe of 1945’, not that of 1933).