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Research in African Literatures 32.1 (2001) 126-128



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In Memoriam

Willfried F. Feuser (1928-2000)

János Riesz


IMAGE LINK= On 28 February 2000, in Port Harcourt, in his chosen home of Nigeria, the life of Willfried F. Feuser ended. I learned the news from his brother, Matthias Feuser, who in his letter of 8 March wrote: "Willfried is being buried in Nigeria, one of his homelands. His son is buried there, his wife and his next of kin live there. And he has spent the greatest part of his professional life in Nigeria. Willfried was just as much an African as a European. Now his misery is over."

His use of the term "misery" could refer to the illnesses and frailties that beset Willfried Feuser during his final years--the amputation of his leg, the material worries after the end of his academic career, the denial of an immigration visa into Germany for his Nigerian wife, Mary Kofoworola Olanrewa, Jr., the death of his son Peter Ifedapo, in 1990, the futile struggle for the life of his friend and former student, Ken Saro-Wiwa. His "misery" also encompasses the pain and resignation of a whole generation of Germans whose childhood was defined by the constraints of the Nationalist Socialist terror, whose youth was destroyed by the Second World War, and who had to begin their adult lives in the difficult postwar years. His "misery," too, was the lack of formal recognition for his professional achievements, for which German academia had no appreciation and no institutional framework.

Willfried Feuser, along with Janheinz Jahn and Ulli Beier, must be regarded as one of the German pioneers in the research and dissemination of African literature in European languages, as well as one of the leading mediators between German/European literature and culture and that of Africa (including the African diaspora). He was born in Benrad-St. Tönis (now Tönsheide near Krefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia) and completed secondary school in Kempen in the Lower Rhine region. Subsequently, he studied literature (English and Romance languages) at the University of Würzburg and while there became one of the first students after the war to receive a scholarship for study in the United States. This led him to Dayton, Ohio, where he wrote his first journalistic works. There, too, his interests awakened in the life and literature of the African American minority in the USA, an interest that eventually developed into the topic of his doctoral dissertation, submitted in 1960 at the University of Freiburg: "The Individual and His Social World as Seen by American Negro Authors, 1930-52."

In 1960, after two years as a German instructor at the University of Glasgow, he came to University College in Ibadan, the first university of independent Nigeria, where many renowned academic would later teach. In 1965, he was appointed a Lecturer there, in 1967 a Senior Lecturer. In 1968, he moved to Ife, where he taught as a professor of French and Comparative Literature until 1977. He then joined the new University of [End Page 126] Port Harcourt as one of its founding professors, teaching there until 1988. Twice he served as Dean of the Humanities faculty to which he belonged--in Ife, 1969-71, and in Port Harcourt, 1984-86.

The numerous publications of Willfried Feuser--in German, English, French, and Portuguese--range from African American literature to African literature in European languages, topics in comparative literature, and German-African literature-cultural relations. In addition to writing critical and literary interpretations of texts, Willfried Feuser dedicated himself above all to furthering communication and understanding of African literature and culture, particularly through his numerous translations, book reviews, and articles of a popular nature. These widely scattered publications, which constitute his life's work, deserve to be brought together and republished in a new edition that would reveal the inner connections among them, just as his unpublished manuscripts should be edited and published. Certainly, his anthology of African literature in German translation, Dies Land is unser [This Land Is Ours], with an introduction by Albert...

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