Robert Herndon Fife Jr. (November 18, 1871 – January 8, 1958) was an American academic who specialized in German studies and served as Gebhard Professor of German and Chair of the German Department at Columbia University. He was the founder of The Germanic Review, former President of the AATG and President of the MLA. Fife wrote on German history, German language and literature, Martin Luther, and German romanticism and edited works by Heinrich Heine, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Ludwig Tieck.
Contents
Life and career
Robert Herndon Fife Jr. was born to Robert H. Fife, a farmer, and Sarah Strickler in Charlottesville, Virginia on November 18, 1871. He grew up with three sisters and three brothers and attended the Jones School, a private classical school in Virginia.
Fife received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Virginia, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to earn his doctorate at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 1901 under the direction of Eduard Sievers and Albert Köster. Fife was a German teacher at St. Alban's School in Radford, VA (1895-1898) before continuing studies at Göttingen and Leipzig from 1898 to 1901.
Fife's first position at an institution of higher education was as an instructor of German at Western Reserve University (1901-1903). From 1903 to 1905, he taught at the summer school at the University of Virginia prior to becoming an associate professor at Wesleyan University (1903-1905). At Wesleyan University, he remained a Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature until 1920. After staying at Wesleyan University, Fife replaced Calvin Thomas as a professor of German at Columbia University in 1920 and upon his appointment at Columbia, received the Gebhard Professorship.