Dagmar Reichardt

Dagmar Reichardt in 2007 during the ceremony of the 34. Flaiano International Prize for Italian Studies

Dagmar Reichardt (born September 25, 1961 in Rome, Italy^[1]) is a German cultural scholar.

Life

Dagmar Reichardt descends from a German Huguenot family with roots extending far back in time, the first documented Renaissance family crest of the Reichardt’s being located in the cathedral St. Georg of Nördlingen, Bavaria, showing the then-mayor of Nördlingen Kilian Reichart (passed away in AD 1577) as first ancestor. The House’s later branches include German composer and music critic Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752–1814), as its most prominent cultural representative who appeared in Königsberg, Halle and at the courts of three Prussian kings in Berlin and Potsdam. With the Poet’s Paradise Garden in Giebichenstein (Giebichensteiner Dichterparadies), which was also called Home of the Romantics (Herberge der Romantik) or Reichardt’s Garden (Reichardts Garten) he created a meeting place for scientists and literary personalities of his time. He was close to the philosopher of German Enlightenment Immanuel Kant during his years of study in Königsberg, engaged in correspondence with his friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and set the latter’s poems to music (Kunstlied), as he also did for Johann Gottfried Herder and August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben. Among other cultural activities, Johann Friedrich Reichardt went on several trips to Italy and published the Frankreich (France) journal in 1795, followed by the cultural-political journal Deutschland (Germany) in 1796.

Reichardt’s extended family includes not only the authors Ludwig Tieck and Heinrich von Kleist, a native of Frankfurt/Oder, but also the Silesian poet Hermann Isaac Emil von Petit (June 9, 1811 – January 30, 1864; also called Hermann de Petit). Von Petit, who was the son of a lieutenant in the regiment of Malschitzky and a French Protestant refugee (Réfugié), worked in the Silesian town of Brieg (now Brzeg, Poland) and was the author of the volume Poems: My Whole Wealth Is My Song (Gedichte. Mein ganzer Reichtum ist mein Lied, 1857) that is archived in the library of the Brieg museum. He also taught French, English, Italian, and Spanish, and published educational textbooks for these languages. Of these, especially his Practical Course for Learning the Italian Language (Praktischer Lehrgang zur Erlernung die italienischen Sprache, 1862 in its 3rd edition) and Indispensible Interpreter for Germans Who Travel to France, Especially Those Who Want to Visit the Paris Industrial Exhibition (Unentbehrlicher Dolmetscher für Deutsche, die nach Frankreich reisen, insbesondere für diejenigen, welche die Pariser Industrie-Ausstellung besuchen wollen), published on the occasion of the first major Paris Industrial Exhibition in 1855, have survived to this day. His volume of Festival Poems for Children (Festgedichte für Kinder, 1857) contained verses in German, French, English, Italian, and Spanish. In 1853, he published a weekly Brieg newspaper under the title of Jest and Seriousness (Scherz und Ernst), which contained essays, poems, and epigrams related to literature and history by various writers.

Dagmar Reichardt grew up as the daughter of a German diplomat in Santiago de Chile and Rome/Italy before she started her international academic career in Germany. From 1986 to 1989, she co-founded, published, and edited the German-Italian culture magazine Zigzag: The Italian Magazine (Zigzag. Das Italien-Magazin) in cooperation with the Institute of Political Science at the University of Hamburg. In Hamburg, she also directed the creative writing workshop with the onomatopoetic German title Reiters Ruhm (Rider’s Renown) by the Writers’ Room e.V. from 1999 to 2009 and worked as a translator, book editor, ghostwriter, and freelance author. During this time, she edited literary books such as Neuere Deutsche Literatur (Newer German Literature, 1991; 1992), as well as an anthology by the Italian scholar of German literature Cesare Cases in German translation (1996). These were followed by additional literary translations and critical editions, including the book of poetry Himmelsreden (Heavenly Speeches, 2004) by Giuseppe Bonaviri, the film script Der heilige Paulus (Saint Paul, 2007) by Pier Paolo Pasolini, as well as music editions by Etta Scollo (2014) or Marco Basley (2014). Reichardt authored almost 200 publications, among them over 130 academic publications and, alone during the years 1987–2004, over 50 books of fiction and non-fiction on the German book market for which she was responsible, publishing and editing them as a freelance chief-lector, translator and ghostwriter.^[2][3]

Academic career

After a first period of study in New York City/USA (1980–1981), Dagmar Reichardt studied Art History, Philosophy, Contemporary German Literature, and Romance Studies, at the universities of Frankfurt am Main/Germany, Urbino/Italy, and Hamburg/Germany. In 1989, she earned her master's degree in Linguistic Science with a thesis on the northern Italian author Guido Piovene (1907–1974). She received her PhD on the Sicilian writer Giuseppe Bonaviri (1924–2009) in 1999 with highest honors, both at the University of Hamburg. Her studies on Sicily were subsequently expanded with an extensive project on the cultural hybridity and transculturality of Sicilian island literature, which led to the publication of the interdisciplinary, trilingual volume of L’Europa che comincia e finisce: la Sicilia (2006). The work received buoyant reviews in the international research scene and met with a very positive reception. Thus, the Sicilian journalist and writer Giuseppe Quatriglio considered this to be “a remarkable study […] with undoubtedly meritorious and complex research results” (Giornale di Sicilia, 7/04/2006), while the Italian literature critic Sergio Sciacca honored it as “an exceptionally original work […] and a significant step toward the cultural design of a “New Europe” (La Sicilia, 7/21/2006). The Spanish Italianist Paulino Matas Gil assessed the volume simply as “mandatory reading for international Italian studies” (Revista de la Sociedad Española de Italianistas, 2005/3). One year after publication of the book, Dagmar Reichardt was awarded the Flaiano International Prize for Italian Studies in 2007.^[4]

Following her years as a Lecturer and Assistant Professor for Romance Studies at the universities of Hamburg (1997–2003) and Bremen (2001–2008), as well as Visiting Professor in Innsbruck/Austria (2008), Reichardt was professor for Modern Italian Studies at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Groningen/The Netherlands from 2008 until 2012, and then Head of Italian Studies and member of the chair group for European Languages and Cultures at the same Faculty (2012–2016).^[5] In 2015 she was appointed to the Chair of Media Industry in the Master and PhD degree program for International Cultural and Media Management at the Latvian Academy of Culture in Riga, Latvia. In addition, she had been actively involved as a member of various academic associations in Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the Benelux, and the USA. She served and still serves on the academic advisory boards of the Premio Flaiano (2001-2006), the International Association of Italian University Professors AIPI (since 2006), and Austrian-Canadian Society (since 2007). Since 2012, she self-initiated, (co-) organized and (co-) directed more than 15 international conferences and/or research panels within world congresses. Moreover, since 2013, Reichardt volunteers as President of the Swiss foundation Fondation Erica Sauter – FES, registered in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2005 and 2007, she worked as a representative of Germany to coordinate various European projects as honorary member of a collaborative scientific board of the foundation Fondazione Salvatore Quasimodo, that published under the auspices of the Italian Cultural Institute in Budapest two collections of new European poets (2005) and young European authors and playwrights (2007, 2 voll.). In 2005/06, she coordinated for Germany the literary-park-project The Book of Stone (Il libro di pietra) by the writer Giuseppe Bonaviri in Arpino/Italy together with the Italian Foreign Ministry and the German poet Matthias Politycki, one of the writers who she had introduced to Italy. On this occasion, she was distinguished with the Cicero Medal of Lazio within the scope of the XXV Certamen Ciceronianum.

Dagmar Reichardt produced numerous publications in the domains of Comparative Literary and Cultural Management, as well as Contemporary Romance and European Studies with a focus on politico-cultural theories and topics. In terms of methodology, Reichardt primarily engages in a critical discussion of transculturalism,^[6] sociological and literary power discourses, as well as the relationship between regional, national, and global identities with a focus on contemporary European and Global Studies.

Main areas of research

■ Media and Cultural Management

■ Digital Humanities and the Cultural Digital Market

■ Comparative European Studies, 19th – 21st century, Migration Studies

■ Comparative, narratological, and imagological approaches: word-image-relations

■ Post-structuralism, Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies

■ Discourse analyses (particularly governance, globalization and intermedia discourses)

■ Sociology of Literature and Production Aesthetics

References

Literature by and about Dagmar Reichardt in the German National Library catalogue

Personal Homepage of Dagmar Reichardt

Homepage at the Latvian Academy of Culture, Riga http://kulturmedien-riga.hostingkunde.de/studium/lehrende.html

Ceremony of the 34. Flaiano International Prize for Italian Studies awarded to Dagmar Reichardt on 8 July 2007 in Pescara, Italy

Essay on "The theory of a transcultural Francophonia" by Dagmar Reichardt in German: PhiN. Philologie im Netz, 38/2006, Online; and in French: "Relief. Revue électronique de littérature française", vol. 5, 2/2011,