Hellmut Geissner (March 7, 1926 in Darmstadt, Germany – August 19, 2012 in Lausanne, Switzerland) was a German scholar of speech and rhetoric.
Biography
Geissner began his career at the Johann W. Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, before teaching at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken.
His last appointed position was as full professor at the University of Koblenz-Landau, where he held the chair for "Sprechwissenschaft" (Speech).
After his retirement he continued to teach at various institutions, including the University of Zürich and the University of Vienna. Because of his influence in founding and forming the field, he continues to be considered one of the three most important representatives of the academic study of speech as communication.
Geissner has distinguished himself with numerous publications on speech and its sub-fields, speech training and rhetoric. In addition he developed the five-theorem theory (Fünfsatztheorie) of Argumentation and the situation model of communication.
