Frank Voigt, Ph.D.DAAD-Lecturer

Interests: Literary Theory, Intellectual History, Relationship between History of Science and Social History, Public Memory and History

Frank Voigt studied German and French literature and linguistics at the University of Potsdam and the Université Rennes II. He graduated in 2012 with a thesis on the concepts of history and memory in the works of Walter Benjamin and Maurice Halbwachs, linking this analysis with an examination of their reception in Germany since the 1960’s. He developed this work in the Research Colloquium at the Potsdam Institut für Germanistik “Literarische Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Ost-West-Vergleich.” Research results from the colloquium were recently published in “Nachkriegsliteratur als öffentliche Erinnerung. Deutsche Vergangenheit im europäischen Kontext” (De Gruyter, 2018). 

After graduation, Voigt transcribed Walter Benjamin’s convolute of excerpts taken in 1934 from the SPD theory journal, “Die Neue Zeit,” (1883-1923). In 2014, he became a Ph.D. candidate at the Ludwig Rosenberg Graduate School, which focuses on the historical relations between labor movements and modern Jewry at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies. In 2016 and 2017, he was a research assistant for Modern German Literature at the University of Osnabrück where he taught courses on narrative theory and contemporary German literary responses to the French revolutions of 1789 and 1830. 

Frank Voigt received a PhD scholarship by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and was awarded the Walter Benjamin Award for Young Researchers by the International Walter Benjamin Society, the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture, the Walter Benjamin Archive, and the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin. Before joining the German Department at Emory as a DAAD Visiting Fellow and lecturer in 2020, he defended his PhD thesis at Potsdam University. The thesis examines the transformations in the relationship between literary criticism and history in reviews and essays by Walter Benjamin with regard to his efforts in understanding the political developments in the Weimar Republic which led to the rise of Nazi Germany. Voigt’s research introduces new material like Benjamin’s Neue-Zeit-convolute, the typescript of his essay on the art historian and collector Eduard Fuchs and relates Benjamin’s theoretical approaches to contemporary debates. It complements Benjamin’s relationship to the Institute for Social Research and the labor movement with important aspects.

Frank Voigt’s interests focus on intellectual history, the relationships between literature, public memory and history, as well as social history and history of science. He enjoys teaching German language and literature in a broad sense and appreciates the interdisciplinary concept of German Studies. He is a visiting scholar at the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory and is affiliated with the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg. He is also a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Critical Theory.

Co-edited books

Nachkriegsliteratur als öffentliche Erinnerung. Deutsche Vergangenheit im europäischen Kontext. Co-edited with Helmut Peitsch, Konstantin Baehrens, Ira Dietrich, Christian Ernst, Christoph Kapp, Jacob Panzner, Ulrike Schneider. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2018.

Material und Begriff. Arbeitsweise und theoretische Beziehungen Walter Benjamins. Reihe Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften. Co-edited with Nicos Tzanakis Papadakis, Jan Loheit & Konstantin Baehrens. Hamburg: Argument-Verlag, 2019.

Articles in journals and books

“Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci and the Problem of Elitist Traditions.” International Gramsci Journal 3.4 (2020): 59-82.

“Die Problemgeschichte wird tatsächlich zur Geschichte der Probleme. ‘Geschichtliche Totalität’ und ‘Augenblick’ bei Walter Benjamin und Georg Lukács.” Co-authored with Konstantin Baehrens. Material und Begriff. Arbeitsweise und theoretische Beziehungen Walter Benjamins, eds. Frank Voigt, Nicos Tzanakis Papadakis, Jan Loheit & Konstantin Baehrens. Hamburg: Argument-Verlag, 2019. 193-242.

“Bilder, Sprache – Töne, Notenschrift. Maurice Halbwachs’ Aufsatz ‘Das kollektive Gedächtnis bei den Musikern’ im Kontext seines Werks.” Nachkriegsliteratur als öffentliche Erinnerung. Deutsche Vergangenheit im europäischen Kontext. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2018. 17-35. 

“’...links vom Möglichen überhaupt’. Walter Benjamin und die Debatte um Karl Mannheims ‘Ideologie und Utopie.’” Judentum und Arbeiterbewegung im 20. Jahrhundert. Streben nach Emanzipation, eds. Markus Börner, Anja Jungfer & Jacob Stürmann. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2018. 217-238.

“Das ‘destruktive Moment’ als ‘Sprungkraft der Dialektik’. Zum gefundenen Typoskript von Walter Benjamins Aufsatz ‘Eduard Fuchs, der Sammler und der Historiker.’” Weimarer Beiträge 62.2 (2016): 212-244.

“Walter Benjamins Lektüre der ‘Neuen Zeit’. Zu einem Konvolut unveröffentlichter Manuskripte aus dem Nachlass.” Das Argument. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften 312 (2015): 185-201.

“Die Aktualität von Halbwachs’ Kritik an Bergson und Durkheim. Zu einigen Problemen in den Halbwachs-Lektüren bei Aleida und Jan Assmann.” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 66.3/4 (2014): 243-269.

“Zu Theorie und Praxis im Lehramtsstudium.” Nach Bologna: Praktika im Studium – Pflicht oder Kür? Em­pi­rische Analysen und Empfehlungen für die Hochschulpraxis, eds. Wilfried Schubarth, Karsten Speck & Andreas Seidel. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag, 2011: 309-315.

Other works

Maurice Halbwachs: “Das kollektive Gedächtnis bei den Musikern”, Co-translated into German with Marie-Hélène Rybicki & Christian Ernst. Nachkriegsliteratur als öffentliche Erinnerung im europäischen Kontext. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2018. 36-64 (“La mémoire collective chez les musiciens”, article first published in Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger 127.3/4 (1939): 136-165)

Series of articles for the webpage www.verbrannte-buecher.de on the prehistory and history of the 1933 book burnings in Germany, in collaboration with the Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für europäisch-jüdische Studien

• GER 101: Beginning German I
• GER 102: Beginning German II
• GER 202: Intermediate German II
• GER 375/Phil 385/JS 380: Crisis & Creativity. Jewish Intellectuals in Weimar Republic
• GER 380/JS 380: Unraveling the Cultural and Political History of Students in Berlin
• GER 375/JS 380: The Jewish Return to Germany after 1945
• GER 375/JS 380/Phil 385/CPLT 389: Walter Benjamin: Cultural Production & Revolution