Throughout several generations of literary critics in Germany, the medievalist Hugo Kuhn (1909-1978) unfolded an intellectual influence that by far exceeded the impact of his published work. This particular resonance can be traced back to two moments in Kuhn's early career: firstly to an essay printed in the 1936 volume of Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift where he unfolds an innovative conception of medieval art and literature, based on fundamental dimensions of otherness in relation to modern Western culture: on the flow of oral tradition with its absence of any ambitions of innovation; on the assumption of God's real presence in the world that assigns determinate functions to all human behavior; and, as a consequence, on the inadequacy of the focus on individual identity that permeates the hermeneutics of the academic Humanities (>Geisteswissenschaften<). Secondly, Kuhn belonged to the few German thinkers who, as early as in 1946, undertook a merciless analysis of how the closeness to National Socialism had dissolved political responsibility in the work of previous generations of scholars, making necessary the discontinuity of a fresh individual and disciplinary departure. Kuhn had thus opened the horizon for a courageous style experimentation that singularly fascinated and motivated his students - and at the same time prevented him from bringing his ideas and hypotheses to the level of closure that we associate with individual excellence in academic work. This may explain why certain impulses originating above all in Kuhn's famously popular lecturing course (>Vorlesungen<) have remained alive and influential until the present debates within literary studies - largely and unfortunately detached from his name.
