Susanne Zantop:
"Unfailingly Gentle"

by Stella Baer

Susanne Zantop was born in Kissingen, Germany on August 12, 1945. She immigrated to the United States in the 1960s, and first came to Dartmouth in the late winter of 1976 with her two daughters, Veronika and Mariana. Before coming to Dartmouth, she studied Political Science in Berlin and then at Stanford, where she received her first master's degree and met her husband, Half Zantop. She went on to study Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts, where she received her second master's degree. Susanne then received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University in 1986. She also taught in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

In 1982 Susanne Zantop joined the Dartmouth faculty in the Comparative Literature program. Soon afterwards she began teaching German and Spanish classes as well. In 1984 she formally joined the German department. Zantop was chair of the German Studies Department at Dartmouth from 1986 until her death on Saturday, January 27. She taught classes in the Women's Studies and Comparative Literature departments as well, and was Parents' Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities and an active member of the Coalition of Women in German since the early 1980s.

Specializing in 18th and 19th century fiction and the history of ideas, Zantop wrote numerous articles and several books on topics ranging from Goethe, Heine, and Frederike Unger to German colonialism, orientalism, women of the 18th century, painting, and the French Revolution. Over the past 13 years she authored or edited eight books dealing with the topics of colonialism and gender. Additionally, she was a regular contributor to a number of scholarly journals.

In 1988 she published Zeitbilder: Geschichte und Literatur bei Heinrich Heine und Mariano Jose de Larra. In her book, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870 (1997)--which was published in German in 1999 by Eric Schmidt as Kolonialphantasien im Vorkolonialen Deutschland (1770-1870--Zantop argued that even before Germany began to colonize other parts of the world, a colonialist mentality had become part of the national consciousness. Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870 won the Best Book In German Studies Award by the German Studies Association. In 1998 Zantop was appointed coeditor of the Women in German Yearbook.

"She was the unanimous choice of the search committee for this role because of her vision, the breadth and depth of her scholarship, and the positive energy she brought to the task," said search committee chair Jeanette Clausen, Associate Professor of German and Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

In addition to the Women in German Yearbook, Professor Zantop edited Paintings on the Move: Heinrich Heine and the Visual Arts (1989) and two of Friederike Unger's works: Bekenntnisse Einer Schönen Seele (1991) and Julchen Grünthal (1991). She was co-editor of Bitter Healing: German Women Writers from 1700 to 1830: An Anthology (1990) and The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and its Legacy (1999).

Zantop's work is known for its tying together of feminist inquiry with postcolonial studies, neo-Marxist analysis, new historicism, and other approaches, according to Clausen. As a native speaker of German, she was committed to increasing opportunities for dialogue among feminist scholars worldwide.

"Susanne was firm in her conviction that first-rate scholarship could be both accessible and enlightening. But she was also unfailingly gentle in her dedication to helping others attain the high standards she set for herself and our journal," said Patricia Herminghouse, Yearbook coeditor and Karl F. and Bertha A. Fuchs Professor Emerita of German Studies at the University of Rochester.

Susanne was editor of the Newsletter of the North American Heinrich Heine Society and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies. At the time of her death she had just finished writing a book with Gerd Gemunden, also of the German Studies department, and Colin Calloway, chair of the Native American Studies department at Dartmouth.

Zantop was also working on a project entitled Postcolonial Amnesia, as well as a sequel to her anthology, Bitter Healing, for the period from 1830 to 1945. She was to deliver the keynote address at the "Grenzen: Charting Boundaries in German Culture, Language, and Literature" conference at Indiana University in late February 2001.

"All of us will remember her bravery, her wit, her critical acumen, her ethics, and her loyalty and support of others," said Jeannine Blackwell, President of Women in German and chair of German Studies at the University of Kentucky. "Our Association has lost a generous collaborator, fine editor, magnificent scholar, and loving friend."

But while Zantop took her academic work quite seriously, her closest friends say there was far more to Professor Zantop and her husband Half than pursuits in their chosen fields of study. Susanne managed to strike a healthy chord between being a professor and a lover of friends, family, and the outdoors. As her fellow Dartmouth professors and close friends Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer note, "Most academics that are as accomplished as they were are seduced by professional advancement and arrange their personal lives around their careers. Yet Susanne and Half reminded all of us that what matters most in life is love, friendship, and community."

Susanne Zantop was a distinguished research professor, but she also loved to spend time in her vegetable and herb gardens, cook for guests, travel, snowshoe, hike, go to films at the Hop, drink espresso coffee, and sail off the cost of Maine in a little boat with her husband.

She was always politically active, often encouraging her friends to pay attention to politics and to get involved, whether they agreed with her views or not. Hirsch and Spitzer describe her as having a "tireless energy, [a] critical and quick mind...strong opinions...intensity and passion for her work."

Her friend and colleague Ulrike Rainer, a professor of German at Dartmouth, knew both Susanne and her husband. "I have known Susanne and Half for almost 25 years and knew them as wonderful friends, great colleagues, and caring, warm human beings. We are all shattered by the loss," she told The Dartmouth Review.

Gerd Gemunden, who knew Zantop for twelve years--as long as he has been at Dartmouth--told The Dartmouth Review that "she was a wonderful colleague, very smart, very dedicated to her students."

Bruce Duncan, a fellow German professor and friend of Susanne's, described her as "an energetic person who loved to cook, play tennis...garden...sail with her husband...but mostly," he added, "she just loved students."

Susanne is survived by her two daughters, Veronika, who is a doctor in Seattle, and Mariana, who attends school in New York.

Dartmouth faculty and students alike mourn the loss of this spirited, gifted woman who served the College for almost twenty years. She will not be forgotten.