Jan Philipp Reemtsma

Jan Philipp Fürchtegott Reemtsma (born 26 November 1952, Bonn, West Germany) is a German literary scholar and political activist.

The son of Philipp Fürchtegott Reemtsma and Gertrud Reemtsma (née Zülch), he studied German literature and philosophy at the University of Hamburg (PhD), where he has been active as a professor of German literature since 1996.

Reemtsma founded the Arno-Schmidt-Stiftung (1981), the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (HIS; 1984) and the Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur (1984). With two exhibitions about supposed war crimes of the Wehrmacht (Wehrmachtsausstellung) and a bestselling account of his experiences during a 1996 kidnapping (published in German as Im Keller in 1997, in English as In the Cellar in 1999, in French as Dans la cave in 2000 as well as in many other languages), Reemtsma has become known to a wider public. In the Germany of today, he has become a frequently cited reference in public debates.

Reemtsma has been the director of the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (HIS) since he founded it in 1984. The three research units of the HIS are: Theory and History of Violence, The Society of the Federal Republic of Germany, and Nation and Society. Reemtsma also headed the working group that conceptualized the Institute’s 1995 umbrella project In the Light of Our Century: Violence and Destructiveness in the Twentieth Century. Within this framework, two exhibitions were realized:

Reemtsma advises and supports cultural and scholarly institutions in various positions, for example as a member of the board of trustees of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States (Kulturstiftung der Länder, 1988-2006).

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