Cultural Scientist Helmut Lethen Dies at 87

Helmut Lethen, a prominent Germanist and cultural scientist, died on Thursday in Vienna at the age of 87. His publisher, Rowohlt Berlin, announced the news. Lethen was born in 1939 in Mönchengladbach and held several academic positions throughout his career. He taught at the University of Utrecht from 1977 to 1996, later held the chair for Modern German Literature in Rostock, and led the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna from 2007 to 2016.

He is widely recognized for his 1994 epochal study, "Verhaltenslehren der Kälte," which examined the promotion of a habitus of hardness during the Weimar Republic and the interwar period through authors such as Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Jünger. Other notable works include the 2006 portrait of Gottfried Benn titled "Der Sound der Väter" and his 2020 memoirs, "Denn für dieses Leben ist der Mensch nicht schlau genug." In 2014, he received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the non-fiction category for "Der Schatten des Fotografen," a book analyzing war images including those of Robert Capa.

His publisher described Lethen as one of the most influential thinkers of the present and a charismatic representative of cultural sciences, noting his intellectual curiosity and generosity. While both reports focus on his academic legacy, the center-right source provides additional detail regarding a theater production titled "Three Times Left is Right." According to that report, the play was inspired by Lethen's partnership with Caroline Sommerfeld, a leading figure of the New Right, exploring the dynamics of a relationship between a left-wing man and a younger right-wing woman.