LIPTZIN, SOL

LIPTZIN, SOL (1901–1995), literary scholar and educator. Leaving his native Satanov, Russia, as a boy, Liptzin was raised in the U.S. He taught at City College, New York, where he became professor of German in 1948 and served as chairman of the department of Germanic and Slavonic languages (1943–58). His interest in the mutual interaction of 19th-century German and English literature finds reflection in works such as Shelley in Germany (1924), and The English Legend of Heinrich Heine (1954). He also wrote Lyric Pioneers of Modern Germany (1928), Arthur Schnitzler (1932), and Richard Beer-Hofmann (1936). Liptzin turned his attention to Yiddish literature in Stories from Peretz (1947), Eliakum Zunser: Poet of His People (1950), The Flowering of Yiddish Literature (1963), and The Maturing of Yiddish Literature (1970). His other works include Germany's Stepchildren (1945), on German-Jewish writers; and The Jew in American Literature (1966). Active in Jewish affairs, he was honorary president of the Jewish Book Council of America and editor of the Jewish Book Annual (1953–56). Liptzin was a visiting professor at Yeshiva University (1929–40) and, after settling in Israel in 1962, at Tel Aviv University (1962–63) and the Haifa Technion (1962–66). He was the Encyclopaedia Judaica departmental editor for German literature.