Max Kade Professor
The Max Kade Professorship
Since 1999, the University of Notre Dame has benefited from a close relationship with the Max Kade Foundation. For the past quarter century, we have hosted a scholar from the German-speaking countries as a Max Kade Visiting Professor for one semester every academic year.
About the Max Kade Foundation
Max Kade (1882-1967) was born in Steinbach/Schwäbisch Hall, Germany, and emigrated to New York in 1907, where he founded the successful pharmaceutical company, Seeck and Kade, Inc. Mr. Kade obtained the rights for the manufacture and distribution of the cough medicine “Pertussin” and became very successful as an entrepreneur and distributor of pharmaceuticals.
In 1944, Mr. Kade and his wife, Annette, established the Max Kade Foundation, initially to help Germany recover from the effects of World War II as well as to improve international understanding and promote cultural exchange between the United States and German-speaking countries in Central Europe. His objective was “to sow the seeds of friendship where there had been enmity.” In 1956, Mr. Kade left his business and turned his full attention to philanthropy, for which he received many honors. He considered the exchange of knowledge among scholars and scientists to be of great importance.
The Foundation has also generously endowed the Department’s current home on campus, the Max Kade Commons in Decio Hall, which opened in 2021.
Academic Year 2025-26:
Prof. Dr. Caroline Emmelius, Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Caroline Emmelius is a scholar of Medieval German literature and language whose research
focuses on the one hand, on religious women’s text production and on the other, on aspects
of media history in the age of early print.
Recently, she has been working on manuscript books with saints’ lives that were written in
late medieval women’s convents. She is co-editing a book on Sibilla von Bondorf, a 15 th -
century scribe and illustrator from the convent of the Poor Clares in Freiburg, which will be
published in 2026.
She is also interested in the production and reception of short narrative prose in 16 th -century
print and has just published an essay discussing questions of verb tense in 16 th -century
narration.
Her first book explored medieval concepts of conviviality, analyzing its social implications as
well as its communicative rules (Gesellige Ordnung 2010).
Since 2022 Emmelius has held the chair for Medieval German Literature at the Catholic
University of Eichstätt, where she is also the Director of the Research Centre for Medieval
Religious Literature. Previously, Emmelius was an Assistant Professor at Heinrich Heine
Universität Düsseldorf (from 2012); she has also taught at Göttingen University and at both
the Freie Universität and the Humboldt Universität in Berlin.
Spring 2026: German Love Songs: Medieval Minnesang to Pop Culture
“Saget mir ieman wâz ist minne?” (Can anyone tell me: What ist love?) – that is a question not only Minnesänger Walther von der Vogelweide asks himself. “Flugzeuge im Bauch” (Airplanes in your tummy) is what German songwriter Herbert Grönemeyer might offer for an answer. The course will introduce you to German love songs from about the 12th century until today. Get to know different historical concepts of what love might be and how tricky emotions can be turned into speech and song. Our discussions will cover formal aspects (rhymes, metre, strophes), stylistic and rhetorical devices, speech roles, gender stereotypes, and of course: concepts of love and how we can sing and talk about them. We will also cover medial aspects of these songs and will embark on several excursions to places like the Hesburgh Library and the Raclin-Murphy Museum.
Past Max Kade Visiting Professors
Skadi Loist, Film University Babelsberg 'Konrad Wolf'
Spring 2025: "Film Festivals"
Simone Neuber, Universität Tübingen
Fall 2023: "Self-deception and Sincerity"
Kristin Skottki, University of Bayreuth
Spring 2023: "Jews and other "Others" in the European Middle Ages"
Alexander Fischer, University of Basel
Fall 2021: "Philosophy and Narrative"
Annika Hand, University of Koblenz-Landau
Spring 2020: “Love and Authenticity”
Gertrud Roesch, Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg
Spring 2019: “Fact and Fiction in German Literature of the 20th/21st Century”
Julia Faisst, Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt
Spring 2018: “The Holocaust in German and American Cultural Memory”
Frank Wolff, Universität Osnabrück
Fall 2016: "A Nation Divided Against Itself?” Block Confrontation and Social Life in Divided Germany,1945-1989
Tim Lörke, Freie Universität Berlin
Spring 2016: "Refugees and German Identity”
Daniel Fulda , Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Fall 2014: "Resonances. Literature as a Medium of World Experience"
Sabine Doering, Universität Oldenburg
Spring 2013: “Hölderlin: Werke und Briefe”
Susanne Kaul, Universität Bielefeld
Spring 2012: “Poetische Gerechtigkeit bei Kleist und Kafka”
Michael Jeager, Freie Universität Berlin
Spring 2011: “Faust and Religion”
Dirk Oschmann, Universität Jena
Spring 2010: “Images of America in German Literature; from Goethe to W.G. Sebald”
Carsten Dutt, Universität Heidelberg
Spring 2009: “Hermeneutics and Literary Theory”
Hartmut Zelinsky, Independent Scholar – Munich, Germany
Fall 2006: “Siegfried: How Richard Wagner’s Opera Became A Code Word of Anti-Semitism”
Helga Finter, Universität Giessen
Spring 2006: “Voice in Text and Theater”
Joachim Dyck, Universität Oldenburg
Fall 2004: “19th - Century German Literature”
Wolfgang Braungart, Universität Bielefeld
Spring 2003: “Literature and Religion”
Monika Schmitz-Emans, Universität Bochum
Spring 2002: “Kaspar Hauser”
Friedhelm Marx, Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Fall 2000: “The Young Goethe”
Hermann Pottmeyer, Universität Bochum
Fall 1999: “Ecclesiology”
Walter Haug, Universität Tübingen
Spring 1999: “The Faust Theme Before Goethe”