Lisa Kahn (poet)

Lisa Kahn in 1968, from The Kinkaid School yearbook

Lisa Kahn (July 15, 1921 – July 3, 2013) was a German-American poet and scholar of psychology and German studies. She studied at the University of Heidelberg, where she obtained a PhD in psychology in 1953. She married the German-American scholar Robert L. Kahn and emigrated to the United States, where she was a teacher at The Kinkaid School from 1964 to 1968 and professor of German at Texas Southern University from 1968 to 1986. Both in her research and in her poetry, she was interested in immigration and bilingualism.

Life and career[]

Kahn was born Liselott Margarete Kupfer in Berlin as daughter of a merchant. From 1948 to 1953 she studied psychology, German literature and English at the University of Heidelberg.^[1] She spent the academic year 1950/51 at the University of Washington sponsored by the Fulbright Program.^[2] In 1953, she obtained a PhD in psychology from the University of Heidelberg,^[3] with a thesis in social psychology^[4] entitled Versuch einer Sozialcharakterologie der dichterischen Gestalten des Naturalismus, "Attempt of a social characterology of the poetic entities of Naturalism".^[5][3]

In 1951, she married Jewish German refugee Robert L. Kahn (1923–1970),^[2] also a poet and scholar of German studies. They had two children: Peter G. Kahn (born 1953)^[6] and Beatrice Margarete Kahn (born 1959).^[2] Robert Kahn became a US citizen in 1956,^[6] Lisa in 1958.^[2] The family moved to Houston in 1962,^[2] where Robert was professor of German at Rice University until his 1970 suicide,^[7] and Lisa taught German and Psychology^[8] at The Kinkaid School in Piney Point Village, from 1964 to 1968.^[1] From 1968 to 1986 she was a professor of German at Texas Southern University.^[2]

Lisa Kahn later married Herbert Finkelstein^[9] and converted to Judaism in 1973.^[2][6] She died in Houston on July 3, 2013.^[10]

Scholarship and poetry[]

Lisa Kahn was interested in literature about the experience of German-speaking immigrants to the United States. She surveyed and collected writing in German by American women writers, noting that the use of the German language helped keep their identity intact,^[11] and edited a volume of related prose and poetry, Reisegepäck Sprache.^[12][13] Starting in 1975 with Klopfet an, so wird euch nicht aufgetan,^[2] Kahn published her own poetry in at least a dozen volumes,^[14] some of them including English texts and reflecting on her experience with immigration and bilinguality^[2] and showing the tension of her mixed feelings towards Germany^[15] but also broad in theme.^[16] In 1978, she edited Tonlose Lieder^[17] (Songs without music), a collection of poems by Robert Kahn and illustrated by her son Peter.^[18] Her 1984 bilingual volume From my Texas Log Cabin, contained texts about Texas and was also illustrated by Peter, and reviewer Glen E. Lich noted the effect of the "intertextual resonance of the facing translations".^[19] Kahn received various distinctions and awards, including the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990^[2] and was named Poeta Laureata by the University of New Mexico^[14] in 1993.^[1] The Society for Contemporary American Literature in German's annual poetry prize, named after Robert L. Kahn from 1988 to 2013,^[20] is now called the Lisa & Robert Kahn Prize for Poetry in German.^[21]

University of Cincinnati professor of German, Jerry Glenn, called her "the prototypical example of an important author who is universally recognized as 'German-American'" in an article on the definition of German-American Literature.^[22]

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