When I studied at the Universities of Münster/Westf. and Freiburg i.Br. in the early sixties, the prevailing methodology was workimmanent interpretation. During my subsequent training at UCLA (1965-67) there was a shift towards a stronger emphasis on the analysis of structure and narrative strategies. I employed this kind of structual analysis in my dissertation and first book, Die Komposition der Romane Christian Friedrich Hunolds (1969), which was later followed by my editing three of Hunoldís novels. Having been infected by the then thriving scholarly interest in German Baroque literature, I wrote several articles on Grimmelshausen’s novels using questions of genre affiliation as my point of departure, a method which I also employed as a structuring principle for my book The German Baroque Novel (1973). My further interest in German Baroque literature during the following years is evidenced by a book on forms of address in the dramas of Andreas Gryphius (with Theo Vennemann) (1970), an edition of Gryphius' drama Carolus Stuardus (1972), and, more recently, encyclopedic articles on Hunold and Grimmelshausen for the volume German Baroque Writers, 1661-1730 (1998) in the series Dictionary of Literary Biography.

During the seventies and eighties my interest in Baroque literature shifted, in conformity with a general trend in German literary studies, to twentieth century literature. I now focused on the relationship between literature and history, my second major during my student years in Germany. Rather than discussing literature in terms of its genre affiliation I was now primarily interested in the function of literature as an expression and part of ongoing historical and political debates. The result were several editions of essays on this topic, notably Zeitkritische Romane des 20. Jahrhunderts (1975) and Gegenwartsliteratur und Drittes Reich (1977). Since I had previously written an article on World War II war literature for the latter volume as well as an article on Erich Maria Remarque as an exile writer, I continued working on that topic, which ultimately led me to write a book on Erich Maria Remarque (1979). This in turn led to a number of articles on that author as well as on other topics of war literature, e.g. on Stalingrad novels and on literature about submarine warfare, e.g. Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s novels and literary works about the German submarine commander Günther Prien. A conference on the United States entering the World War resulted in a volume (with Thomas F. Scheider) Huns vs. Corned Beef. Representations of the Other in American and German Literature and Film (2007). Apart from that, I authored a number of biographies or monographs on twentieth century German writers, on Erich Kästner (1973), Stefan Andres (1974), Frank Wedekind (1979), Gabriele Wohmann (1986), Sarah Kirsch (1989), Siegfried Lenz (1976), Carl Zuckmayer (1983), Franz Werfel (1993), and Lion Feuchtwanger (1996). In 2000 I published a comprehensive biography of René Schickele, the editor of Die weißen Blätter and advocate of German-French reconciliation, reflecting my continued interest in the relation between literature and history by focusing on Schickele’s pacifism and his fight for German-French reconciliation. In 2002 I published a biography of Richard Friedenthal, the author of famous biographies of Goethe, Luther, Hus, and Marx . A biography of the Austrian novelist and literary parodist Robert Neumann came out in 2007.

The more general biographies and monographs stimulated me to write more specialized studies, particularly on Zuckmayer, including a book-length critical Forschungsbericht, Carl Zuckmayer: Tracing Endangered Fame (1995), and an edition of the Zuckmayers’ correspondence with Alma and Franz Werfel (2003), and on Werfel, making use of the Franz Werfel archive in UCLA's Department of Special Collections.

As is obvious from all of my publications, I am not interested in short-lived literary theories, but in literary texts as an expression of their authors’ views and of the aesthetic, historical, and political debates of the times in which these texts were written. I would be happy to work with students who share my enthusiasm about literature of the areas in which I have done most of my work.