From the Editors

In this issue of Marvels & Tales, we note with sadness the untimely passing of two colleagues who were still in the prime of their careers—Thomas Geider and Harold Neemann. Both of them made important contributions to fairy-tale studies, not only as scholars and teachers, but also as exemplary colleagues of all and as dear friends to many in the discipline.

Thomas Geider

Thomas Geider was born on 29 April 1953 in Bonn, Germany. He majored in geography, ethnology, and African studies in Bonn and Köln and completed his doctoral studies in 1989 at the Universität Köln with his widely acclaimed dissertation, Die Figur des Oger in der traditionellen Literatur und Lebenswelt der Pokomo in Ost-Kenya (Köln: Köppe, 1990). This two-volume study has achieved canonical status in the scholarship on the oral literatures of Africa, the field that was the focus of Thomas's research and in which he has made a lasting imprint. Other important projects followed this early masterpiece, including his Habilitationsschrift for the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Motivforschung in Volkserzählungen der Kanuri (Tschadsee-Region): Ein Beitrag zur Methodenentwicklung in der Afrikanistik (Köln: Köpper, 2003). During his career, Thomas taught and conducted research at universities in Maiduguri (Nigeria), Bayreuth, Mainz, Köln, Leipzig, and Frankfurt. Known for his work on African folktales and Swahili literature, Thomas was also the coeditor of Swahili Forum, a contributor to the Enzyklopädie des Märchens, and an adviser for The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. In 2007 he was named an außerplannmäßigen Professor at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, and since 2008 he worked in the Institut für Afrikanistik at the Universität Leipzig. He died on 15 October 2010 in Köln in the aftermath of a stroke he had suffered earlier in the year.

Harold Neemann

Born on 27 September 1958 in Northern Germany, Harold Neemann was an associate professor of French and head of the French Section in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Wyoming, where he taught French language, literature, and culture for more than a decade. He received his education degree from a teachers' college in Emden (Germany) and a bachelor's degree from Metropolitan State College (1990). His MA (1992) and PhD (1998) in French were awarded by the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he studied with Jacques Barchilon, the eminent scholar of the French fairy tale and founding editor of Marvels & Tales. A specialist in seventeenth-century French literature and intellectual history, Harold is known especially for his book Piercing the Magic Veil: Toward a Theory of the Conte (Tübingen: Narr, 1999) and for his research on the conte de fées and women writers of the seventeenth century. His scholarship has been published in forums such as Merveilles & contes/Marvels & Tales, Fabula, the Enzyklopädie des Märchens, and The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Harold died on 5 June 2010 in Laramie, Wyoming, after a struggle with cancer.

Many of us saw Thomas Geider and Harold Neemann for the last time in June 2009 at the 15th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research in Athens, Greece. Who could have anticipated that in less than two years, these fine colleagues and friends would no longer be among us? We are left with our memories of them and the legacy of their scholarship.