Fraenkel, Jonas
FRAENKEL, JONAS
FRAENKEL, JONAS (1879–1965), Swiss literary historian. Fraenkel was born in Cracow, Poland, studied at the Universities of Vienna and Berne, and became a lecturer at the latter in 1908 (professor extraordinary, 1921). He devoted himself to the investigation of German-Swiss literature and was the editor of the works of Gottfried Keller (17 vols., 1926–39). Other Swiss authors who engaged Fraenkel's attention were C.F. Meyer and his friend Carl Spitteler, whose unpublished works were bequeathed to Fraenkel for publication (Spitteler – Huldigungen und Begegnungen, 1945). In German literature Goethe and Heine were among his chief interests, and he published a new edition of Heine's poems (3 vols., 1911–13). Several of his essays were collected in Dichtung und Wissenschaft (1954).
add. bibliography:
J. Schütt, Germanistikm und Politik – Schweizer Literaturwissenschaft in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (1996).
[Ludwig W. Kahn]