Péter Szondi (; 27 May 1929, Budapest – 18 October 1971, Berlin) was a celebrated literary scholar and philologist, originally from Hungary. Biography Szondi's father was the Hungarian-Jewish psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Léopold Szondi, who settled in Switzerland after his 1944 release after five months in Bergen-Belsen. In 1965, Péter became a Professor at the Free University of Berlin, where he led the Institute for General and Comparative Literature. His fields were the history of literature and comparative literature. He committed suicide in 1971 by drowning himself in the Halensee in Berlin on 18 October, leaving unfinished his book about the work of his friend Paul Celan, who had killed himself the year before. Works Über eine "Freie Universität". Suhrkamp, 1973 Die Theorie des bürgerlichen Trauerspiels im 18. Jahrhundert. Suhrkamp, 1973 Celan-Studien. Suhrkamp, 1972 = Celan Studies, trans. Susan Bernofsky with Harvey Mendelsohn, Stanford University Press, 2003. Hölderlin-Studien. Insel, 1967 Satz und Gegensatz. Insel, 1964 Der andere Pfeil. Insel, 1963 Versuch über das Tragische. Insel, 1961 Theorie des modernen Dramas. Suhrkamp, 1956 "Hope in the Past: On Walter Benjamin", reprinted in Benjamin, W. (trans. Howard Eiland), Berlin Childhood Around 1900, 2006, Belknap Press [Harvard UP]. References External links Peter Szondi and Critical Hermeneutics, an issue of Telos (140, Fall 2007) 1929 births 1971 deaths Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivors Comparative literature academics Academic staff of the Free University of Berlin Hungarian Jews Writers from Budapest Suicides by drowning in Germany Hungarian emigrants to Germany 1971 suicides