International Rolf-Lessenich-Fellowship

Every year, the University Foundation awards up to six Rolf-Lessenich-Fellowships to international, interdisciplinary scholars from English and Romance Studies to enable them to undertake a teaching and research stay at the University of Bonn.

About the Fellowship

Rolf Lessenich was Professor of English Studies at the University of Bonn between 1982 and 2007. After his death in 2019, he bequeathed his fortune to the University Foundation with the explicit goal to promote research and teaching in the fields of English Studies and Romance Studies. A part of the funds is used to finance scholarships for students – the so-called Deutschlandstipendien. But it was the expressed wish of Prof. Lessenich that the funds should also be used to invite international scholars to Bonn who work in the fields of English and Romance Studies. This is what the Rolf-Lessenich-Fellowships are intended to accomplish: international exchange and inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration, borne by Prof. Lessenich's deep conviction of the indispensability of thinking and working across disciplines and cooperating with scholars from across the world.

Rolf Lessenich in conversation with students in 2018.jpeg
Rolf Lessenich in conversation with students in 2018 © Barbara Frommann/Uni Bonn

About Rolf Lessenich

Rolf Lessenich was born in Cologne on June 19, 1940. After studying English, Romance philology and theology at the universities of Cologne, Bonn and Oxford, he completed his doctorate in 1965 with a thesis entitled Dichtungsgeschmack und althebräische Bibelpoesie im 18. Jahrhundert: Zur Geschichte der englischen Literaturkritik (Böhlau, 1967), which later appeared in edited form and in English under the title Elements of Pulpit Oratory in Eighteenth-Century England (1660-1800) (Böhlau, 1972). In 1976 he gained his habilitation with a thesis entitled Lord Byron and the Nature of Man (Böhlau, 1978) and subsequently worked as a senior assistant in Bonn and as a substitute professor at the University of Würzburg. From 1982 until his retirement in 2007, Rolf Lessenich was Professor of English Studies at the University of Bonn.

Rolf Lessenich was a committed academic teacher who was popular with students and a nationally and internationally recognized specialist in the European cultural history of the 18th and 19th centuries, who researched on the Baroque, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Victorianism and early Modernism from a comparative perspective. He was a highly respected and well-connected authority, particularly in national and international Romanticism research. His publications include three further monographs, Aspects of English Preromanticism (Böhlau, 1989), Neoclassical Satire and the Romantic School (1780-1830) (Bonn UP/v&r unipress, 2012) and Romantic Disillusionism and the Sceptical Tradition (Bonn UP/v&r unipress, 2017), as well as over 90 scholarly articles, which appeared in internationally renowned books and journals.

Rolf Lessenich was well-traveled and polyglot: He spoke fluent English, French, Spanish and Hebrew. Comparative research beyond the narrower boundaries of his subject was a matter of course for him. He was also deeply devoted to his university and its students and a co-founder of the Bonn Centre for the Classical Tradition. Even in retirement, he looked forward to the exchange with his students and doctoral candidates, whom he supported with great commitment and who benefited from his academic vision and enthusiasm.