Max Kade Professor
The Max Kade Professorship
Since 1999, the University of Notre Dame has benefited from a close relationship with the Max Kade Foundation. For the past quarter century, we have hosted a scholar from the German-speaking countries as a Max Kade Visiting Professor for one semester every academic year.
About the Max Kade Foundation
Max Kade (1882-1967) was born in Steinbach/Schwäbisch Hall, Germany, and emigrated to New York in 1907, where he founded the successful pharmaceutical company, Seeck and Kade, Inc. Mr. Kade obtained the rights for the manufacture and distribution of the cough medicine “Pertussin” and became very successful as an entrepreneur and distributor of pharmaceuticals.
In 1944, Mr. Kade and his wife, Annette, established the Max Kade Foundation, initially to help Germany recover from the effects of World War II as well as to improve international understanding and promote cultural exchange between the United States and German-speaking countries in Central Europe. His objective was “to sow the seeds of friendship where there had been enmity.” In 1956, Mr. Kade left his business and turned his full attention to philanthropy, for which he received many honors. He considered the exchange of knowledge among scholars and scientists to be of great importance.
The Foundation has also generously endowed the Department’s current home on campus, the Max Kade Commons in Decio Hall, which opened in 2021.
Academic Year 2023-24:
Simone Neuber, Universität Tübingen
Simone Neuber is currently pursuing a Fritz Thyssen research project on Søren Kierkegaard at the University of Tübingen. She is also a "Privatdozentin" at the University of Jena. Her dissertation on the paradox of fiction ("Scheinbeziehungen. Von Scheingefühlen und anderen Scheinproblemen der analytischen Ästhetik") has been published by Mentis. Her habilitation thesis on the history of ideas of self-deception will soon be published by Mohr Siebeck. A major focus of Simone's research interests is in the area of existential philosophy (in the broadest sense), where she has published on Sartre, Heidegger, Blaise Pascal, and Augustine, among others.
Fall 2023: Self-deception and Sincerity
What tortures us [...] is an opinion, and every evil is only as great as we have reckoned it to be. In our own hands we have the remedy. Let us [...] deceive ourselves". (Seneca) Is this good advice to take to heart in our lives? Does self-deception make us happy? Or does it pose dangers to our moral integrity, so that sincerity should always be our ideal? In this course, we will look at important answers to these questions. We will also discuss what other philosophical conundrums are associated with self-deception and what solutions to them have been proposed in the literature - by contemporary thinkers and by thinkers of the tradition.
Past Max Kade Visiting Professors
Kristin Skottki, University of Bayreuth
Spring 2023: "Jews and other "Others" in the European Middle Ages"
Alexander Fischer, University of Basel
Fall 2021: "Philosophy and Narrative"
Annika Hand, University of Koblenz-Landau
Spring 2020: “Love and Authenticity”
Gertrud Roesch, Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg
Spring 2019: “Fact and Fiction in German Literature of the 20th/21st Century”
Julia Faisst, Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt
Spring 2018: “The Holocaust in German and American Cultural Memory”
Frank Wolff, Universität Osnabrück
Fall 2016: "A Nation Divided Against Itself?” Block Confrontation and Social Life in Divided Germany,1945-1989
Tim Lörke, Freie Universität Berlin
Spring 2016: "Refugees and German Identity”
Daniel Fulda , Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Fall 2014: "Resonances. Literature as a Medium of World Experience"
Sabine Doering, Universität Oldenburg
Spring 2013: “Hölderlin: Werke und Briefe”
Susanne Kaul, Universität Bielefeld
Spring 2012: “Poetische Gerechtigkeit bei Kleist und Kafka”
Michael Jeager, Freie Universität Berlin
Spring 2011: “Faust and Religion”
Dirk Oschmann, Universität Jena
Spring 2010: “Images of America in German Literature; from Goethe to W.G. Sebald”
Carsten Dutt, Universität Heidelberg
Spring 2009: “Hermeneutics and Literary Theory”
Hartmut Zelinsky, Independent Scholar – Munich, Germany
Fall 2006: “Siegfried: How Richard Wagner’s Opera Became A Code Word of Anti-Semitism”
Helga Finter, Universität Giessen
Spring 2006: “Voice in Text and Theater”
Joachim Dyck, Universität Oldenburg
Fall 2004: “19th - Century German Literature”
Wolfgang Braungart, Universität Bielefeld
Spring 2003: “Literature and Religion”
Monika Schmitz-Emans, Universität Bochum
Spring 2002: “Kaspar Hauser”
Friedhelm Marx, Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Fall 2000: “The Young Goethe”
Hermann Pottmeyer, Universität Bochum
Fall 1999: “Ecclesiology”
Walter Haug, Universität Tübingen
Spring 1999: “The Faust Theme Before Goethe”