Rose, William (1894-1961)

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 0367 WRO
Held at	: Institute of Modern Languages   Click here to find out how to view this collection at http://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/library ›
Full title	: Rose, William (1894-1961)
Date(s)	: 1903-1961
Level of description	: Collection (Fonds)
Extent	: 56 boxes
Name of creator(s)	: Rose | William | 1894-1961 | Professor of German, London University
Detailed catalogue	: Click here to view repository detailed catalogue

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

William Rose was educated initially at the Birmingham Hebrew School from where he entered the King Edward VI Grammar School, Birmingham, with the aid of a Piddock Trust Scholarship. He went on to attend Birmingham and London Universities. During World War One, and until 1920 he served in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, the Machine Gun Corps and then with the R.A.F. He obtained his doctorate from London University with a thesis on Goethe and Byron, which was published in 1924. Among his tutors were Professor A. Wolff, Professor J.G. Robertson, Professor Robert Priebsch and Professor Wilson-Law. In 1926 he married Dorothy Wooldridge, who shared his work and interests. They had a son and a daughter.

After his discharge from the Army in 1920, Rose took up a post as lecturer in the Department of German at King's College London and was appointed Reader in 1927. In 1935 he became the Sir Ernest Cassel Reader in German in the University of London and in that same year was appointed Head of the Department of Modern Languages at the London School of Economics and Political Science of the University of London. In 1949 he was appointed to a Chair of German Language and Literature in the University of London while keeping his post as Head of Department at the LSE.

During World War Two Rose served in the Intelligence Corps (1939-44) and was one of the dedicated band of British German-language specialists who worked on code-breaking and the Enigma project at Bletchley Park. After 1933, he took a personal interest in the fate and welfare of German exiled intellectuals, and figures such as Franz Werfel and Stefan Zweig were frequent and welcome visitors to his house. He made his support public by being a member of the PEN-Club and joining in the public condemnation of the Nazi regime with regard to the treatment of Jews, intellectuals and cultural life generally in Germany. He was involved in the 'German Library of Burned Books' scheme (1934, under the presidency of Heinrich Mann) whose British committee was headed by H.G. Wells. André Gide was among the honorary presidents.

He was an active member of the Council of the English Goethe Society and gave strong support to the journal German Life and Letters both at its inception and its renewal after World War Two. Rose was scholar, editor, translator and critic. The core of his research interests lay in the work of Goethe, Heine and Rilke, but he also worked on the modern German lyric and the Expressionists. As one of the growing band of 'Germanisten' in British universities who were not German-born, he was an articulate and vigorous proponent of a new approach to German studies. He believed that the connection between literature and life should never be forgotten and pioneered the introduction of the psychoanalytical approach to the study of German literature, vigorously upholding his belief in its sociological implications. He was regarded by some of his peer group as a populariser.

In his last years he had to contend with the onset of blindness but did not allow this to interfere with his interests. His lectures and speeches were written in extra large print as opposed to a cursive hand or typewritten. He was active right up to the time of his death, having delivered a characteristically interesting and lively address at a dinner the previous evening. He was Chairman of the Committee of Management of the Institute of Germanic Literatures and Languages in the University of London (now the Institute of Germanic Studies) and had planned to spend the next year (1962) as a visiting professor at McGill University, Canada. He died as a result of head injuries sustained in a fall after the dinner mentioned above.

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

Research papers and correspondence of Professor William Rose, 1903-1961, comprising:
School, Undergraduate and Postraduate notes, including exercise books from King Edward VI Grammar School, Birmingham, 1910-1911, undergraduate notes from Birmingham University, 1912-1915, and postgraduate notes from University College London, and King's College London, 1920-1922;

Papers on Rose's service on World War One and World War Two, including accounts and photographs of service with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, the Machine Gun Corps and the RAF, 1915-1920, and official documents obtained in his capacity as an intelligence officer (1942-46), includes information digests for Germany and Austria on the Nazi War Trials, documents on post-war rehabilitation in Germany (particularly in education) and the German psyche;

Papers relating to Rose's academic career, including lecture notes, examination papers, papers on the KCL German Society, and teaching methodology in universities; research notes on literary history, genres and movements, Psychoanalysis, Socio-historical and political influences, Jewishness and individual literary figures including Goethe, Schiller, Heinrich Heine, Rainer Maria Rilke; correspondence and papers on other academic acivities including reviewing and editing, speeches and broadcasts, and papers on Anglo-German organisations including the English Goethe Society and the PEN-Club;

Collection of approximately 900 newscuttings and other ephemera, 1903-1961, arranged by theme and then chronologically, includes articles, publishers' catalogues and blurbs, obituaries, and book reviews, from a variety of sources but mainly newspapers and newssheets. Some of the items concerning German literary and other eminent figures have portraits. The content reflects Rose's wide range of interests, not all of them literary. Subjects include: art and architecture; 'Arbeiterdichtung'; bibliography; European culture; folklore; history; literary history, theory and criticism; the German military and General Staff; German poetry and prose; Goethe and Schiller; medieval themes; National Socialism and its influence; performing arts; the two world wars;

General Correspondence, 1908-1958: correspondents include Max Hermann-Niesse, 1936-1938; Peter Huchel, 1956-1958; Leopold Jessner, 1934-1936 (with letters from Frank Wedekind to Jessner, 1908-1913); Alfred Kerr, 1945-1948; Else Lasker-Schüler, 1931-1939; Thomas Mann, 1934; Robert Neumann, 1934-1946; Kurt Pinthus, 1929-1937; Olga Schnitzler [wife of Arthur Schnitzler], 1938, and Stefan Zweig, 1934-1939;

Miscellaneous papers including a collection of unwritten postcards, an essay on Birmingham and Soho, and an unidentified fragment of a play about Napoleon.

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English and German

System of arrangement:

The papers are divided into six classes Early Years, War Years, Academic Career, Newscuttings and Ephemera, General Correspondence and Miscellanea.

Conditions governing access:

Researchers should apply to consult material at least forty-eight hours in advance by letter, facsimile, e-mail or telephone. The Library staff need a name and contact number, a concise and clear idea of the nature of the enquiry and a date and time for consultation.

Conditions governing reproduction:

Photocopies may be made, although this is at the discretion of the Librarian and is dependent on the nature of the material.

Finding aids:

List, copy deposited at the National Register of Archives (NRA 29443).

Archival Information

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

Presented to the IGS by the Rose family in 1962-1963 and 1972-1973.

Allied Materials

Related material:

A collection of Rose's 'non-German' papers was sold at Christie's, South Kensington, in 2001. The collection included leters from T.S. Eliot, A.E. Housman, Bertrand Russell, Max Beerbohm, Hilaire Belloc, E.M. Forster, J M Keynes, Siegfried Sassoon, Vita Sackville-West and Sir Ernest Shackleton.

National Register of Archives: Click here to view NRA record

Publication note:

Description Notes

Archivist's note:
Compiled by Jennifer Hogarth, revised by Alan Kucia as part of the RSLP AIM25 Project.

Rules or conventions:
Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000 and National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal Place and Corporate Names 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions:
Revised May 2002.