Dieter Cunz

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Dieter Cunz (August 4, 1910 — February 17, 1969), German-born American historian, writer, educationist, and occasional journalist. He is also said to have co‑authored several detective novels or Kriminalromane in collaboration with Oskar Seidlin and Richard Plant (1910–1998) under the collective pen‑name of Stefan Brockhoff (q.v.).[1]

Cunz was born in the rural area of the Westerwald, and grew up in Schierstein (in Hesse), a suburb of Wiesbaden. He studied history, history of religion, and German literature at several places within Germany, ending with the University of Frankfurt (Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main), where in 1934 he submitted a historical dissertation on Johann Casimir of Simmern.[2] He subsequently emigrated to Switzerland. In 1936 appeared his study in European constitutional history, Europäische Verfassungsgeschichte der Neuzeit,[3] followed the next year by a monograph on Zwingli.[4] His Um uns herum: Märchen aus dem Alltag appeared in 1938.[5] In the same year Cunz emigrated to the United States; here his first publication seems to have been a historical study of the German-Americans settled in the state of Maryland, issued in 1940,[6] a precursor of his The Maryland Germans: A History of 1948.[7] He taught as professor of German at the University of Maryland, and from 1956 onwards at the Ohio State University, which now has a building named after him (Dieter Cunz Hall of Languages, at 1841 Millikin Road in Columbus, Ohio).

To the genre of children’s literature belongs his They came from Germany: The Stories of Famous German-Americans, published in 1966.[8] He also co‑authored a couple of textbooks for the study of the German language.

He died unexpectedly on February 17, 1969, at the age of 58.

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  1. ^ Cf. Stefan Brockhoff, Schuß auf die Bühne (Leipzig, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1935); id., Musik im Totengässlein (Bern, etc., Goldmann, 1936); id., Drei Kioske am See (Leipzig, Goldmann, 1937); id., Begegnung in Zermatt (Munich, Goldmann, 1955). Another novel, entitled ‘Verwirrung um Veronika’, is said to have been serialized in the Zürcher Illustrierte in 1938. Cf. Angelika Jockers and Reinhard Jahn, eds., Lexikon der deutschsprachigen Krimi‑Autoren (2nd ed., rev.; Munich, Verlag der Criminale, 2005). The present writer is unable independently to corroborate the attribution in question.
  2. ^ Published as: Dieter Cunz, Die Regentschaft des Pfalzgrafen Johann Casimir in der Kurpfalz, 1583–1592 (Limburg an der Lahn, Druck der Limburger Vereinsdruckerei, 1934).
  3. ^ Dieter Cunz, Europäische Verfassungsgeschichte der Neuzeit (Leipzig, Queller & Meyer, 1936).
  4. ^ Dieter Cunz, Ulrich Zwingli (Aarau, H.R. Sauerländer, 1937).
  5. ^ Dieter Cunz, Um uns herum: Märchen aus dem Alltag (St. Gallen, Buchhandlung der Evangelischen Gesellschaft, 1938).
  6. ^ Dieter Cunz, A History of the Germania Club (Baltimore, Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland, 1940).
  7. ^ Dieter Cunz, The Maryland Germans: A History (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1948).
  8. ^ Dieter Cunz, They came from Germany: The Stories of Famous German-Americans (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1966).