Hermann Boeschenstein

Hermann Boeschenstein
Boeschenstein in 1956, photographed by Ken Bell
Born	(1900-05-01)May 1, 1900 Stein am Rhein, Switzerland
Died	September 21, 1982(1982-09-21) (aged 82) Toronto, Canada
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Rostock
Thesis	Die Aesthetik des J. P. de Crousaz (1924)
Doctoral advisor	Emil Utitz
Academic work
Discipline	Germanist
Institutions	University of Toronto
Doctoral students	Robert L. Kahn
Main interests	German literature

Hermann Boeschenstein (May 1, 1900 – September 21, 1982) was a Swiss-Canadian scholar of German studies and author of several novels. After his youth in Stein am Rhein and Schaffhausen, he studied in Germany and obtained a PhD in philosophy in 1926. He travelled in Europe and Canada, settling in Toronto in 1928, where he taught German and German literature at the University of Toronto from 1930 to 1968. From 1943 to 1946, he took a leave of absence to serve as Director for Canada of the War Prisoner's Aid of the YMCA, travelling to the Canadian internment camps for German prisoners of war and overseeing work to help them re-integrate into postwar society. In 1956, Boeschenstein became the Head of the German department at Toronto.

Besides his scholarly work that included eleven monographs about German culture and literature, he wrote short stories and novels with some autobiographic elements, many of them concerned with migration. Two novels were published during his lifetime, the 1921 expressionist Die Mutter und der neutrale Sohn and the 1977 Im Roten Ochsen: Geschichte einer Heimkehr about a Swiss emigrant couple's return home. Two further novels about migration and a monograph about German literature were published posthumously from Boeschenstein's manuscripts.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers of German awards a Hermann Boeschenstein medal in his memory.