Heinz Kosok
(1934-2025)

On 7 March 2025 Heinz Kosok, one of the most prominent and influential members of the post-War generation of German professors of English, died a few days before his 91st birthday. During an academic career which spans more than four decades Heinz Kosok completed outstanding achievements.

After the graduation from the gymnasium in his native town of Wilhelmshaven he studied English and American literature, physical education and pedagogics at the universities of Marburg and Bristol. In 1961 he received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Marburg for his dissertation on Die Bedeutung der Gothic Novel für das Erzählwerk Herman Melvilles. After having been appointed assistant professor at Marburg he directed his research interests towards Irish literature and particularly towards Irish drama. In 1970 he completed his postdoctoral study Das dramatische Werk Sean O’Caseys, which was published in 1972. The year became crucial in Heinz Kosok’s career because he was offered chairs of English literature at the universities of Marburg, Vienna, Münster and Wuppertal. His eventual decision to accept the chair at the University of Wuppertal was largely due to the tremendous opportunities for developing new ideas and concepts of research and teaching as proffered by a newly founded institution. As dean of the developing faculty of languages and literatures, Heinz Kosok initiated numerous structural reforms and helped to shape the faculty’s new profile. In retrospect the creation of Anglo-Irish literature as an entirely new area of academic research turned out to be the most consequential decision of his early days at Wuppertal, the more so since he integrated Irish writing in the English language into the more encompassing field of “Literatures in English outside England”. In the programmatically entitled volume Literaturen in englischer Sprache: Ein Überblick über englischsprachige Nationalliteraturen außerhalb Englands (1977) Heinz Kosok argued against a monolithic concept of English literature and instead drew attention to the plurality of literatures in English outside England, particularly in Ireland, North America, Australia, and New Zealand.

Within this institutional framework Heinz Kosok fashioned Irish literature into an academic discipline in its own right. Through his prolific output as literary critic and historian, his continued acquisition of material on Ireland for the university library and his commitment for the “International Association for the Study of Irish Literature” (IASIL), which he joined as early as 1973 and for which he served as chairman from 1982 to 1985, Heinz Kosok ensured that Wuppertal became, at least inofficially, the German centre for Irish Studies. Moreover, he never lost sight of English literature as a subject at large. In 1975 he joined the advisory board of the “Anglistentag”, as it was then called, the German society of university professors of English, and he was elected chairman of the association in 1989. This was the beginning of a crucial and extremely challenging period since the unification of Germany caused enormous repercussions in the field of academic reorganisation. When he handed over the office to this successor three years later, he had greatly helped to pave the way for a successful reorganisation of the numerous English departments in the new federal states.

As a scholar Heinz Kosok published extensively on the literatures of Britain, Ireland, the USA, and Canada. His oeuvre comprises more than thirty books and more than one hundred shorter publications which cover a large variety of subjects and genres with a distinctive focus on theatre and drama. On 21 March 1999 Heinz Kosok celebrated his 65th birthday and was subsequently appointed Emeritus Professor of English literature at the University of Wuppertal. Friends, colleagues and students used this occasion to honour him with a festschrift on Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama in English. His interest in writings in the English language never slackened after his retirement and he continued to publish articles and reviews. Having always been great travellers Heinz and his wife Gill enjoyed extended visits to Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, the Cook Islands and further parts of what he lovingly called his “terranglia”.

Jürgen Kamm