Alexander Rudolf Hohlfeld - Early and Professional Life

Early and Professional Life

His father was Karl Gottlieb Hohlfeld and his mother was Helene (maiden name Libbert) Hohlfeld. He attended high school at the Annen Realschule in Dresden, Germany. Thereafter he studied modern languages from 1884 until 1888, receiving a doctorate at the University of Leipzig in 1888. He studied in Paris in 1889 and thereafter he was an instructor in French at Vanderbilt University from 1889-90. In 1890 he married Helen Voss from Elgin, Illinois. Hohlfeld was an adjunct professor of Romance languages at Vanderbilt from 1890-2, then professor of Germanic languages from 1892–1901, becoming dean of that department at Vanderbilt in 1900-1. In 1904, Hohlfeld was appointed chairman of the University of Wisconsin German department, holding this position until his retirement in 1936. Helmut Rehder, whose doctorate was from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, was his successor as department chairman.