Departures of note

Helmut Lethen was a German Germanist and cultural scholar who became one of the most influential figures in German cultural studies. Born in Mönchengladbach, he studied at universities in Bonn, Amsterdam and Berlin, and was a left-wing student activist in the 1960s. He earned his doctorate in 1970 with a study of New Objectivity in literature, and later held professorships at the University of Utrecht and the University of Rostock, where he occupied the chair of modern German literature. He also directed the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies in Vienna from 2007 to 2016.

Lethen gained wide recognition through his 1994 epoch study "Verhaltenslehren der Kälte" (Cool Conduct), which examined how Weimar-era intellectuals cultivated a habitus of hardness and distance in the interwar period. His 2006 portrait of Gottfried Benn, "Der Sound der Väter", further cemented his reputation. In 2014 he received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the non-fiction category for "Der Schatten des Fotografen", his autobiographical study of war photography and images.

He published his memoirs "Denn für dieses Leben ist der Mensch nicht schlau genug" in 2020. His personal life drew renewed attention when his relationship with the writer Caroline Sommerfeld, a leading figure of the New Right, inspired the 2025 theatre performance "Three Times Left is Right". Lethen died in Vienna in August 2026 at the age of 87.