Walter Jens

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Walter Jens (born May 8, 1923) is a German philologist, literature historian, critic, university professor, and writer.

In the beginning 1940s, Jens joined the NSDAP. He denies having applied for membership actively and claims having been forced to join the party. He claims having become a member automatically, because he was a member of the Hitler Youth and never having received a membership card. During World War II, he earned a doctorate in Freiburg with a work about Sophocles' tragedy and habilitated at age 26 with the work Tacitus und die Freiheit (Tacitus and Freedom) at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. Jens was a member of the Turnerschaft Akademischer Turnbund.

From 1950, Jens was a member of the Group 47. In this year he had his breakthrough with the novel Nein. Die Welt der Angeklagten. One distinguishing characteristic of his literary work is that he interprets current events by looking back at the past.

From 1965 to 1988, Jens held the chair for General Rhetoric at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, which was created just in order to keep him at the university. Under the pseudonym Momos he wrote television reviews for Die Zeit. From 1976 to 1982, he was president of the International PEN center in Germany. From 1989 to 1997, he was president of the Akademie der Künste, now he is the honorary president. From 1990 to 1995, he was chairman of the Martin-Niemöller-Foundation.