Professor Walter Pape awarded doctorate honoris causa from Charles University












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            * Professor Walter Pape awarded doctorate honoris causa from Charles University
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            On April 7, 2010, the leading European German philologist and literary scientist and profe
            University of Cologne, Walter Pape, received a Doctorate Honoris Causa of Philosophy. The 
            promotor, prof. Zdeněk Beneš, awarded Walter Pape with the doctorate on the grounds of his

            the Czech-German relations in the fields of culture, science and education. The ceremony w
            celebrations of the 662nd anniversary of the foundation of Charles University.
            In his lecture, Walter Pape spoke about language as a medium of literature. The professor 

            attention to the relationship between the real world and the world of language: “The sign 
            mislead us, if we believe in a fixed relation between the sign and the its denotation. Nei

            nor language can have blind faith in such a relation, even though in everyday life, we nee
            order to survive.”
            He proceeded to talk about the potential of language for metaphorical expression using exa

            and letters by Franz Kafka, who wrote: “Almost no word I write fits well with another one,
            consonants grating against each other and vowels singing like negroes at an exhibition.”*
            Prof. Dr. Walter Pape was born in Magdeburg in 1945. He studied German and English philolo

            science at the University of Heidelberg. In 1972, he finished his doctorate and eight year
            became assistant professor. His academic career is however linked to the University of Col
            he became professor in 1988 and was the head of the Faculty of Arts in the years 1997 – 20

            a visiting professor at the University of California San Diego and Santa Barbara in 1983 a
            respectively. In 2000 professor Pape became a member of the Academic Senate in charge of r
            the University of Cologne and Charles University.

            His academic scope is very broad: besides Enlightenment and Romanticism-era literature, he
            on 19th and 20th century novel. He is a leading authority in the field of theory of comedy
            in literature and political poetry. Among his numerous published works, we can find monogr

            Busch, Joachim Ringelnatz and a series on publications on Heidelberg and Berlin Romanticis
            is also the editor of the series such as European Cultures: Studies in Literature and the 
            by the Walter De Gruyter, Berlin, New York.

            Footnotes:
            *115.XII 10
            Translation: Jaroslav Švelch