Howard Stern

Senior Lector II, Germanic Languages and Literatures

Howard Stern, A.B. Harvard University, Ph.D. Yale University, faculty member at Yale since 1983: Born in a displaced persons’ camp in Poland, your first language was Yiddish, a language you taught at Yale as a labor of love, un-reimbursed, in addition to your regular course load. As an undergraduate at Harvard you studied mathematics and your understanding of the field informed the dissertation on Walter Benjamin you wrote in Comparative Literature at Yale, as well as the book based upon it, with its proto-cybernetic cast.

As lector and later senior lector in German, your devoted yourself to your students, whether in the teaching of Intensive German or in courses on lyric poetry. Indeed, you are yourself a poet, whose translations of Eduard Moerike and Christian Morgenstern are unsurpassed. You have dedicated countless after-class hours to teaching students meter and poetic language and your coaching produced the annual Poetry Recitations around which the department’s holiday party is organized. In Spring, you directed a cabaret featuring klezmer music and comical skits. Students of classical music are taken aback when you identify Brahms pieces by their opus number.

For the past quarter century, you have, in close conjunction with friends from other departments, convened the “Moderately Cheerful Hour,” a weekly gathering of students, faculty, and friends of German, whose goals are the celebration of poetry and music and the informal exchange of ideas. As the MC of the MCH, you provide entertainments such as “the 5:30 poem” and musical performances. Your efforts have highlighted that learning does not only take place through research, textbooks, or even classroom teaching. It happens effortlessly and with joy in the kind of community you have been at pains to see existed. Through your inspired labors, you’ve established a high level of hospitality for the German Department and an important zone of conviviality and discussion at Yale. As you retire your colleagues and friends stand and salute you with a heartfelt zum wohl!

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans