*7 February 1887, Vienna, – †16 September 1960, Forte die Marmi, Italy
Leo Spitzer was a scholar of Romance philology and literary theory. He came from an Austrian Jewish family and is considered a proponent of stylistics. He published on a wide range of topics in linguistics as well as literary and cultural history.
A student of Wilhelm Meyer-Lübkes, Leo Spitzer earned his doctoral degree in 1910 and initially worked as a lecturer at the University of Vienna (1913). His career was interrupted during World War I, when he worked at the Austrian Censorship Office. In 1920 he went to Bonn. In 1925 he became a full professor for Romance philology in Marburg before succeeding Etienne Lorck at the University of Cologne in 1930. In Cologne, he was one of the founders of the Portuguese-Brazilian Institute (1932).
After the National Socialists took power, he was dismissed from the University because of his Jewish heritage on 7 April 1933. That year, he emigrated to Istanbul, where he established a chair for European philology and became the head of the University’s language school.
Unlike other German scholars who had also come to Istanbul and stayed there during the war, Spitzer was able to emigrate to the United States in 1936 and was offered a chair in Romance philology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
In 1949, he published his avant-garde work “American Advertising Explained as Popular Art.” This book won great acclaim in Europe, particularly in Italy.
In 1955, Spitzer received the Antonio-Feltrinelli-Prize, and in 1959 a former student of his, Hugo Friedrich, published a volume of more than 900 pages containing a collection of Spitzer’s papers in five languages (German, French, Italian, Spanish, and English). The work was published at the University of Cologne and financially supported by the German Research Foundation DFG.
In 1946, Spitzer was invited to return to his position at the University of Cologne.