Liliane Weissberg

Liliane Weissberg is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Arts and Sciences and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts & Sciences. She holds cross-affiliations with multiple graduate groups and programs, including Jewish Studies, Art History, English, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Religious Studies, Architecture, and Psychoanalytic Studies, reflecting her deeply interdisciplinary scholarship.

Her research centers on German and comparative literature from the late eighteenth to early twentieth century, with a strong focus on German-Jewish intellectual history, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, realism, and psychoanalytic theory. She also contributes significantly to visual studies and cultural memory, often bridging literary analysis with philosophical inquiry and museum curation.

The recent publications and curated exhibitions in her body of work reveal a sustained engagement with questions of identity, authority, and representation. Her scholarship frequently explores the intersections of literature, philosophy, and Jewish thought, particularly through figures like Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Rahel Varnhagen. The thematic threads across her articles include commentary as a mode of thinking, the construction of cultural memory, and the role of literature in political and psychoanalytic discourse.

Her scientific awards include some of the highest honors in the humanities: the Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Prize for her life's work, Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, and an honorary degree from the University of Graz. Additional recognitions include the Mercator Fellowship and a Senior Fellowship from the IFK in Vienna.

She has advised numerous graduate students and has been awarded major research grants that supported her fellowships and publications. Her curatorial work, including exhibitions at the Jewish Museum Frankfurt and the German Historical Museum Berlin, demonstrates a commitment to public scholarship and interdisciplinary collaboration. She has also held visiting professorships at institutions in the United States, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, including the Franz Rosenzweig Professorship at the University of Kassel.

She is actively involved in academic and cultural institutions, serving on the scholarly board of the German Historical Museum Berlin. Her recent curation of the exhibition What is Enlightenment? Questions for the Eighteenth Century (2024–2025) underscores her ongoing leadership in shaping public understanding of Enlightenment thought.