Guy Stern was born in Hildesheim, Germany in 1922, immigrated to the United States in 1937. From 1940 to 1942 he studied at St. Louis University, followed by three years of army service. As a sergeant in U.S. Military Intelligence, he took part in the Normandy invasion. After World War II, he continued his studies at Hofstra University, then at Columbia University.  While teaching at various American universities, he also accepted guest professorships at the Goethe Institute and the universities of Freiburg, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Potsdam, and Munich.

 

Following his retirement from Wayne State University in 2003, Stern took the position of Director of the International Institute of the Righteous at the Holocaust Memorial Center of Greater Detroit.

 

Among his numerous publications are War, Weimar, and Literature. The Story of the “Neue Merkur” 1914-1925 (1971); Literatur im Exil. Gesammelte Aufsätze 1959-1989 (1989); Literature and Culture in Exile (1997); and Fielding, Wieland, Goethe, and the Rise of the Novel (2003).

 

Among his awards are Distinguished Germanist of the Year (AATG 1985), the Grand Order of Merit and the Goethe Medal of the Federal Republic of Germany and he received an Honorary Doctorate from Hofstra University and in 2005 he was honored in a second Festschrift from Synchron Verlag: Autobiographische Zeugnisse der Verfolgung: Hommage für Guy Stern. In 2017 he received the French Legion of Honor Medal for his wartime service.