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Alexander Stephan was a specialist in German literature and area studies. He was a professor, Ohio Eminent Scholar, and Senior Fellow of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at Ohio State University.
Stephan studied American and German literature at the Freie Universität in Berlin and at the University of Michigan. He obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University, where students in his elementary German courses remember him as one of the best teachers they had in that very distinguished institution. Subsequently, he taught at Princeton, the University of California-Los Angeles and University of Florida. At Ohio State University, he held a research professorship in German literature and area studies.
As professor of German literature, Stephan focused on the modern period. His publications covered the history of German exile literature, the Weimar Republic, and the literature of the German Democratic Republic. He was the author of books, among others, on Anna Seghers, Christa Wolf, Max Frisch, and Peter Weiss. Stephan was also the first researcher who obtained access to the documents which the FBI kept on German exile writers such as Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas Mann and Anna Seghers.
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