August Closs

August Max Closs (9 August 1898 – 21 June 1990) was a professor of German studies. Born in Austria, he studied German and English language and literature, and in 1929 moved to London. There he taught at University College, and became friends with the German scholar Robert Priebsch, whose daughter Hannah he married. In 1931 he began teaching at the University of Bristol, where he stayed until his retirement in 1964. He was a prolific author on and editor and anthologizer of German poetry. In addition, he was a dedicated collector of manuscripts and books; part of his collection was sold to Princeton University, and the rest forms the Priebsch-Closs Collection Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies. He is remembered also for his efforts to bring about German-English reconciliation after the Second World War, especially between the cities of Bristol and Hanover.

Closs was born in Neumarkt in Steiermark, Austria, the child of a law official, Alois Closs, and his wife, Rosa (born Halm). From 1906 to 1916 he attended the Fürstbischöfliches Gymnasium in Graz, then served in the Austrian army. The Italians imprisoned him in 1918, and upon his release, in 1919, he enrolled at the University of Graz where he studied German and English and received his doctorate with a thesis on Arno Holz, directed by Bernhard Seuffert. At the University of Vienna he got a teaching qualification in 1924, then taught school.

He moved to England in 1929 and lectured at the University of Sheffield before he moved to London and taught at University College London. There he met Robert Priebsch, a German professor (author of Handschriften in England, Erlangen 1896-1901), whose daughter Hannah he married in 1931. They had one daughter, Elizabeth Closs Traugott, who was a professor of linguistics and English at Stanford University, from 1970 to 2003. Closs admired Priebsch greatly, and edited of some of his unpublished work, including Letter from Heaven (1936) and Christi Leiden in einer Vision geschaut (1936), as well as his correspondence with the linguist Elias von Steinmeyer.

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