Prof. Dr. Cornelia Zumbusch – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prizewinner 2026
Modern German Literature, University of Hamburg
How do science and literature interact? This question is addressed in the research field known as the poetics of knowledge, to which Cornelia Zumbusch has made a number of new and decisive contributions with her research work. Zumbusch’s work on the knowledge of literature is located at the interface between literary studies, cultural studies and intellectual history and demonstrates that literature is not only a medium that is on equal footing with science and the humanities, but is also a knowledge-creating and in the broadest sense epistemological force in itself. In her studies on 18th and 19th century literature, Zumbusch has shown how literature interlinks modern-day knowledge with millennia-old formal, pictorial and genre traditions. Her recently published monograph on “romantic thermodynamics” is an impressive account of the ways in which literature is involved in shaping the current debate on energy. Zumbusch is among the most productive and internationally acclaimed literary scholars of her generation, and her reputation reaches far beyond the field of German studies.
Cornelia Zumbusch studied modern German literature, Anglistics, art history and philosophy in Tübingen and Berlin and earned her doctorate at the FU Berlin in 2003. She initially worked at the Department of German Philology of LMU Munich as a research assistant, before gaining her postdoctoral teaching qualification in 2009 with her thesis titled “Die Immunität der Klassik. Reinheit, Schutz und Unempfindlichkeit bei Schiller und Goethe” (“The immunity of classics. Purity, protection and immunity in Schiller and Goethe’s work”). Since 2013, she has been a Professor of Modern German Literature at the Institute for German Studies of the University of Hamburg, focussing on the 18th and 19th century. She has also been a visiting professor at Harvard University in 2020 and at the University of California in 2023. Since 2015, Zumbusch has been the co-director of the Warburg House and co-spokesperson of the DFG Centre for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences "Imaginaria of Force", in whose establishment she was also involved.
GEPRIS
In our information system GEPRI(externer Link) you will find an overview of current and completed projects of Cornelia Zumbusch.