Anja Oesterhelt

Anja Oesterhelt is a full Professor at the Institute of German Studies, Department II: Modern German Literature, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Her work focuses on German-language literature from the 18th to 21st century within European cultural history, emphasizing migration, transculturality, and German-Jewish cultural production, particularly relating to figures like Heinrich Heine and Rose Ausländer. She leads a

• Collaborative Research Center 1671: Heimatlosigkeit und Emanzipation
• Heine's 170th death anniversary audiobook project
• Digital exhibitions (VOOO-Space, ULB Düsseldorf)
• Interdisciplinary text-image analysis

initiatives.

Her research integrates media theory and institutional conditions of literary creation, comparing fictional/factual texts across letters, autobiographies, and contemporary novels. Recent seminars explore topics like

• Popliteratur (Goetz, Kracht, Hegemann)
• Exile in 19th-century travel narratives
• Text-image relationships in artist books
• Karl Wolfkehls' Italian exile poetry

with an emphasis on practical literary mediation through events, audiovisual productions, and digital exhibitions.

She supervises doctoral candidates including Hans-Christian Riechers (Columbus literary history), Olga Schwarz (narrative poem cycles), and Philippe Roepstorff-Robiano (hermeneutics of dying). The chair collaborates with institutions like the Heinrich-Heine-Institut, ULB Düsseldorf, and Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, utilizing

• Archival research
• Media analysis
• Praxis-oriented seminars

to connect academic work with public cultural engagement.