Walter Silz

Born to a German-American family in Cleveland, Silz received his A.B. in 1917 and his Ph.D. in 1922 from Harvard University.^[2] In 1922 he married Frieda Bertha Ruprecht Osgood, the daughter of William Fogg Osgood;^[3] she died in 1937.^[4] Silz taught at Harvard and at Washington University in St. Louis before becoming a professor at Swarthmore College. He headed what was then the German section of the department of modern languages at Princeton University from 1948 to 1954.^[5] From 1954 to 1963 he held the Gebhard Chair of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. He was twice awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, once for the academic year 1926–1927 and again for the academic year 1960–1961. He died in 1980. His second wife, Priscilla Kramer Silz, was a professor of German at Rider College.^[2]

as author:

• Heinrich von Kleist's conception of the tragic. 1923.^[6]
• Early German romanticism. Harvard U. Press. 1929.
• Realism and reality: studies in the German novelle of poetic realism. U. of North Carolina Press. 1954.
• Heinrich von Kleist: studies in his work and literary character. U. of Pennsylvania Press. 1961.
• Hölderlin's Hyperion: a critical reading. U. of Pennsylvania Press. 1969.

as editor: German romantic lyrics. 1934.