Silvio Vietta

Silvio Vietta

Silvio Vietta (born 1941) is a German emeritus professor at the University of Hildesheim. His work focusses on German literature, philosophy and European cultural history. His main areas of research are Literature of Expressionism, Romanticism, Literary Modernity. Additionally, he published on Martin Heidegger, with whome he had personal connections as a student, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Recent research is concerned with the European cultural history, mainly the history of rationality.

Biography

Silvio Vietta is the son of the writer Egon Vietta and Dorothea, born Feldhaus. He studied in the years 1962 - 1968. After completing his studies in German Literature, Philosophy, English Literature and Pedagogy he received his PhD from the University of Würzburg in 1970 on the subject Language and the Reflection on Language in Modern Poetry. Vietta started his career as a lecturer of German at Elmira College/ Elmira USA and taught at the Universities of Heidelberg, Tübingen, Mannheim and Hildesheim. In 1981 he finished his habilitation on Modern Rationality and Literary Criticism at the University of Mannheim. In the years 2006 he was visting professor at the University of Moscow (RGGU), 2007 and 2008-09 he was visiting professor at the University of Sassary/ Italy and 2012 visiting prof. at the University of Campinas/ Brasil. Vietta is Member of the Advisory Board of “Angermion”, Yearbook for Anglo-German Literary Criticism/ London, Member of AVUR (Agenzia nazionale valutazione ricerca Universitaria), Italy, Member of the International German Society.

In 2006, he received the Friedrich Nietzsche Prize of the State of Saxony-Anhalt.

Theory

Vietta is specialized in the field of macro-theories of epochs expressionism, romantic era, modernity and in the recent years has become one of the pioneers in 'Europeism' as a field of intercultural European Studies. In 2012 he published "Texte zur Poetik" ("Texts on Poetics"), a historical documentation of the basic European texts on poetics from Plato and Aristotle to Postmodernism and cybernetic poetics. His recent work is a long-term study of the history of rationality: "Rationalität. Eine Weltgeschichte. Europäische Kulturgeschichte und die Globalisierung" ( Rationality. A World History. European History of Culture and Globalization, 2012), in which he shows how the European concept and practice of rationality has explored and conquered the world and led to the present world civilization. Vietta speaks of the "empire of rationality" as a world governing power, including different irrational effects.