One of the foremost scholars of Prague and its literatures, Peter Demetz was born in Prague in 1922, but emigrated to Germany and later to the United States in 1949.
Before leaving, he earned a Doctorate from Charles University. Once in America, he received a Masters Degree from Columbia University and a PhD from Yale University.
The Air Show at Brescia, 1909 , recently published, is an erudite distillation of an event which brought together the likes of Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Giacomo Puccini and Gabriele D'Annunzio. The book, he tells, is very historical, saying “It was the first meeting of important poets and important pilots in cultural history. It's based on detailed facts.”
In 1971, Demetz received the Golden Goethe Award of the Federal Republic of Germany for his contributions to the study of German culture. In 1981, he served as the president of the Modern Language Association. Three years later, he was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit by the German government. In 2000, he received a Medal of Merit for his studies of the Czech Republic.
Peter Demetz is now the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Germanic Language and Literature at Yale University. He lives in New Jersey in New York.
prepared by Ladislav Čumba and skutecnost.cz
