Anja Lemke

Biobibliographical Note

Anja Lemke is Professor of German Literature at the University of Cologne and Director of the Erich Auerbach-Institute for Advanced Studies. She studied German and Spanish literature, Political Science and Philosophy in Freiburg, Madrid, Hamburg (PhD 2001, Habilitation 2009). She taught and researched at the Institute for Comparative Literature at Goethe-University in Frankfurt, at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and at the KWI in Essen. She also was visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, Max Kade-Professor at Johns-Hopkins University (2018) and Visiting Professor at Princeton (2021). Her works include a book on Martin Heidegger und Paul Celan Konstellation ohne Sterne. Zur geschichtlichen Zäsur bei Martin Heidegger und Paul Celan, (2002), a book on Walter Benjamin Gedächtnisräume des Selbst. Walter Benjamins Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert (2005) and as part of a collective authorship „Art Works. Ästhetik des Postfordismus (2017). She recently published two collective volumes together with Niklaus Largier on “Theorien des Möglichen (2022), and on Blumenberg, Wirklichkeitsbegriff und die Möglichkeit des Romans (2025). She is currently working on a book on Kontingency and Potentiality – Leibniz and the Novel around 1800