Helene Harth
Prof. Helene Harth President
Helene Harth studied classical philology, German and Romance languages and literature in Frankfurt am Main, Tübingen and Florence and habilitated with a three-volume critical edition of the letters of the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini, which was published by Olschki. She held chairs of Romance Philology in Passau and Saarbrücken and founded after the fall of the Berlin Wall as acting President of the German Romance Association, the Institute of Romance Studies at the University of Potsdam, where she then worked as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and as Vice Rector for Development Planning and Finance. From 1997 to 2003 she was a member of the Science Council. From 2001-2003 she was the first elected President of the German-French University in Saarbrücken. She has headed the Selection Committee of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation since 2005 and is a member of the Board of Trustees. Since 2009 she has held a permanent visiting professorship at the Institute of Italian Culture and Literature of the University of Szczecin.
Her scientific publications and research interests concern French literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, but above all Italian Renaissance literature, contemporary Italian literature and culture and postcolonial literature in Italy today. She was the founder and longtime publisher of the magazine Zibaldone, which is dedicated to the cultural contact between Germany and France.
Helene Harth has received numerous awards for her scientific and cultural activities: Premio Montecchio (for cultural mediation between Germany and Italy); Premio Carlo Betocchi (for her scientific work), the Prize of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the magazine "Zibaldone"; the Order "Chevalier" and "Officier des Palmes Académiques" (for the development and training of East German French teachers at the University of Potsdam) and the Prize of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their translations and cultural activities.