From the President

Members of the Goethe Society gathered this year in San Diego at the German Studies Association convention where there were inspiring panels on Goethe, some sponsored by the Society such as “Goethe at Play,” others emerging spontaneously. Vice President Catriona MacLeod together with the Directors at large, Heidi Schlipphacke and John Smith, awarded prizes for the best essay at the annual reception. This year we thank Elizabeth Powers, long-time Goethe Society member and scholar, for her endowment of the Richard Sussman Essay Prize for the best essay on Goethe’s contribution to the sciences and the history of science during the Goethezeit.Many of us are sad to see Simon Richter step away from the editorial board of the Goethe Book Series at Bucknell University Press. Simon has had tremendous influence on the growth of the Goethe Society. He was the first editor of the Goethe Yearbook after Thomas Saine retired. Later he became president of the Society. Simon has always been very conscious of his responsibility to carry forward the intellectual aspirations of the first members of the Goethe Society and he has been kind in passing along that sense of continuity to the scholars who have come after him. With an ear to Simon’s recollections about the older generation, we sent out a call for recollections about the first years of the Goethe Society. Meredith Lee and Ehrhard Bahr have gathered together their memories to recount the practical and intellectual goals in founding the North American Goethe Society. You can find their histories included here in this newsletter.The next conference of the Goethe Society will be held November 3-4, 2017 at Penn State University. A full description of the overarching topic “Re-Orientations around Goethe” was included in the previous newsletter and a formal Call for Papers will be published later this fall. We look forward to your joining us next year. Penn State University is serviced by the University Park Airport (SCE), which has connections to major airline hubs. We look forward to proposals for individual papers and collective panels. More information will be coming soon.

Daniel PurdyPennsylvania State University

From the Executive Secretary

Greetings from Maine (where we have another gorgeous fall)!Writing this note, I am still inspired by the great panels on “Goethe and Play” at this year’s GSA (organized by Elliott Schreiber and Edgar Landgraf). But it is already time to think ahead to next year! GSA will meet in Atlanta, October 5-8, 2017. Please send me proposals for GSA panels no later than November 15^th, 2016!Meanwhile, we can look forward to two exciting panels at the MLA 2017: one, on “Goethe and Refugees,” organized by Karin Schutjer and me, and one on “What Goethe Heard,” organized by Mary Helen Dupree in collaboration with the Executive Committee on 18^th and early 19^th century literature. Panel proposals for MLA 2018 will be due December 1^st, 2016!Informal discussions at GSA suggested that there are many ideas for new initiatives, as well as questions and suggestions, hibernating among you! Please send all of them my way, including but not limited to new programming, ideas on recruiting more members, collaboration and support. Email me at btautz@bowdoin.edu.Best wishes, Birgit

Birgit TautzBowdoin College

2016 Business Meeting

On October 1, 2016, members of GSNA gathered at the GSA conference for our annual business meeting and cash bar. President Daniel Purdy ran the business meeting, beginning with a report on overall standing of the society, programming initiatives such as Global Goethe and the preparation of the next Atkins Goethe Conference. The conference will take place November 3-4, 2017 on the campus of Penn State University. Daniel, and our two directors-at-large, Heidi Schlipphacke and John Smith, have begun the planning process. Heidi and John are looking forward to paper and panel submissions on “Re-Orientations around Goethe.”Heidi, John, and Vice President Catriona MacLeod formed the Prize and Awards committee this summer, reading many excellent essays on Goethe, his century, and interdisciplinary inquiries of Goethezeit. Catriona read the wonderful citations detailed in her report. She presented the prizes to two winners in attendance, Heather Sullivan and Howard M. Pollak-Milgate. We all were gratified to honor such robust and exciting scholarship, not only in the award-winning essays but also in the Goethe Yearbook and in the book series.Elisabeth Krimmer reported on the upcoming volume of the Goethe YB, and I read Karin Schutjer’s report on the book series. Please see Catriona’s, Elisabeth’s, and Karin’s reports in this newsletter to read about all the recent and forthcoming innovative projects.Finally, Christian Weber assured us of the society’s financial strengths in his report, including discussions about introducing multi-year membership options. Attendees floated various ideas of interest and concern to the GSNA, and we wrapped up by my calling attention to recent books by members and upcoming, society-sponsored conference panels at MLA and ASECS, all of which are an excellent complement to the stellar panel series at GSA (on Goethe and play, organized by Elliott Schreiber and Edgar Landgraf).

Birgit TautzBowdoin College

News from Members

Proserpina by Goethe and Seckendorff had not been performed since its 1778 premiere in Weimar. But on October 14 it was heard again on the Weis Center Stage at Bucknell University along with a new electro-acoustic composition on Goethe’s text by Paul Botelho. This is all part of GSNA member Annie Randall’s project Proserpina: Two Monodramas (1777 and 2016).Here’s what Proserpina looks like in the Goethe/Seckendorff version of 1777-78—not seen by anyone since that time (!!)—played by the New York Baroque Orchestra: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmpfI0A2d0s. And here’s what she looks like in the 2016 electro-acoustic version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqL2hhyNLSs.See an overview of the project.---In other news, we are pleased to announce that Past President W. Daniel Wilson has been awarded the Reimar Lüst Award for International Scholarly and Cultural Exchange from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Supported by the German Foreign Office and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the award carries a prize of 60,000 euros. It also entails an invitation to collaborate with other scholars at the University of Göttingen and the Foundation for Weimar Classicism.Dan Wilson’s research focuses on literature, culture and society of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Germany. He is currently researching a book on the politics of the Goethe-Gesellschaft in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. He reports that he has come across some interesting things about the Goethe Society of America (in New York), which was an Ortsgruppe of the Goethe-Gesellschaft. It turns out that the American “branch” was very important for Nazi cultural politics. More to come!www.royalholloway.ac.uk/aboutus/newsandevents/news/newsarticles/danwilsonmajoraward.aspx  

From the Editor of the Book Series

The monograph series currently has several projects at different stages in the pipeline. Meanwhile we were very busy over the summer reviewing proposals.We have one announcement:  Simon Richter has resigned from the board because of his workload related to other important commitments. The choice was hard for Simon: he has been involved with the series since its founding. He deserves our tremendous thanks for this service as well as for all of his many other contributions to the ongoing vitality of the GSNA. I’m also very grateful to our continuing hardworking board members: Jane Brown, Martha Helfer, and Astrida Tantillo.We remain, as always, very eager to see your proposals. Please send a prospectus and sample chapter to me by email. You’re also welcome to send an optional introduction, if available. Our entire editorial board evaluates proposals and generally responds within 4-6 weeks.Please direct proposals or inquiries to me at kschutjer@ou.edu. I hope to hear from you!

Karin SchutjerUniversity of Oklahoma