Walter Jens
Jens, Walter (Hamburg, 1923- ), was educated at the Johanneum in Hamburg, studied at Hamburg and Freiburg universities, and was from 1956 until his retirement professor of classical philology, from 1963 also the first occupant of the re-established chair of rhetoric and director of the Seminar für allgemeine Rhetorik at Tübingen University. The revival of academic study of rhetoric was the result of his personal initiative, characteristic of his wide-ranging commitment to Germany's cultural and democratic development. An author, essayist, critic, translator, and public speaker, he was from 1976 to 1982 president of the West German PEN centre and from 1982 its honorary president; in 1989 he was elected president of the Academie der Künste, Berlin.
Jens, who wrote his Habilitationsschrift on Tacitus und die Freiheit (1949), published his first and best-known novel, Nein. Die Welt der Angeklagten, in 1950; reminiscent of Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) and Kafka, it represents the negative utopia of a totalitarian state (Weltstaat) which eliminates all traces of human self-expression. It was followed by the Novelle Der Blinde (1951), the novels Vergessene Gesichter (1952) and Der Mann, der nicht alt werden wollte (1955), and the story Das Testament des Odysseus (1957), devoted to peace; Herr Meister. Dialog über einen Roman (1963) is a witty discourse on modernist aesthetics resulting in the abandonment of a planned novel. Jens was closely associated with Gruppe 47. As in his story on Odysseus, he has made it his special task to show the contemporary relevance of the Greek heritage; he has adapted works for the stage and as radio plays (see Hörspiel), and contributed to literary studies, first with Hofmannsthal und die Griechen (1955), though his main work consists of translations and adaptations of plays by Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes, on whose Lysistrata he based Die Friedensfrau (1986). Since the 1970s he has similarly updated his biblical renderings from the Greek, turning first to Matthew (Am Anfang der Stall—am Ende der Galgen, 1972; Der barmherzige Samariter, 1973), then to Mark (Die Zeit ist erfüllt. Die Stunde ist da, 1990) and Luke (Und ein Gebot ging aus, 1991). During this period he has also collaborated with the theologian Hans Küng; Dichtung und Religion (1985) is a joint work on eight writers from Pascal to Kafka. Jens's numerous other publications include collections of speeches: Republikanische Reden (1976, ext. 1979), Ort der Handlung ist Deutschland. Reden in erinnerungsfeindlicher Zeit (1981), and Einspruch. Reden gegen Vorurteile (1992). Jens received the Lessing Prize in 1968 and the Heine Prize in 1982.
