Henry Kreisel
Vice-President (Academic) (1970-75)Henry Kreisel, author, university professor, former "enemy alien," and officer of the Order of Canada, died in Edmonton on April 22, 1991 at the age of 68. He had been diagnosed as suffering from pancreatic cancer in March and had been hospitalized early in April.
An inspiring lecturer, he taught generations of students to love and talk about literature. And as one of the first modern Canadian novelists to write about the immigrant experience, he also contributed to making Canadian literature worth talking about.
"I have tried to bridge the two worlds — the European world and the Canadian world. It is a natural thing for me to do — it reflects my experience," he explained in an interview in 1981.
As a writer, Kreisel was best known for his two novels, The Rich Man (1948), adapted into a successful play, and The Betrayal (1961). His well-regarded short stories include "The Broken Globe," which has been widely anthologized and translated and adapted into a moving stage play, and the comedic "The Travelling Nude," which won the University of Western Ontario President's Medal as the best short story published in Canada in 1960.
Kreisel was born in Vienna in 1923. His father was a salesman, frequently unemployed, who took little interest in things artistic or literary. His mother, however, encouraged her two sons to take advantage of the cultural opportunities of the city. "I was swimming in that sea of culture that was Vienna," Kreisel later recalled. That swim abruptly came to an end when Hitler's troops marched into Austria in 1938. Kreisel escaped into Britain only to find it an uncertain haven: in 1940 he was working as a trainee cutter in a Leeds tailoring factory when "two men in raincoats" appeared and he was taken into custody as an "enemy alien."
After being shunted from place to place in Britain, he was transported to Canada, where he was held with other German and Austrian refugees of Jewish descent in a prisoner-of-war camp near Fredericton, New Brunswick. Later Kreisel described the camp as having been "a market place of ideas" and said that he had never again encountered an intellectual exchange of so concentrated a form. Stimulated by this environment, he decided to become a writer.
Because he knew that he would never return to Austria, he decided to free himself from linguistic and psychological dependence on German by writing in English.
In 1942, Kreisel was released and stayed in Canada, an "accidental immigrant" to a country that before his arrival he had known only as a large red stretch on a school map. To further his goal of becoming a writer, he enrolled in the University of Toronto. Six years, 11 scholarships and two degrees later, he found himself at the University of Alberta, a lecturer in the Department of English. (His formal studies were completed in 1954 when, following a two-year leave, he earned a PhD at the University of London.)
During his distinguished career at the University of Alberta, he taught in the Departments of English, Drama and Comparative Literature and received the prestigious distinction of "University Professor." From 1961-67, he served as head of the English Department, and from 1970-75 as the University's vice-president (academic). He also was president of the Association of Canadian University Teachers of English.
As head of the Department of English, he introduced the first course in Canadian literature to the University — on more than one occasion, he spoke of how as a newcomer to Canada he went looking for Canadian literature and no one could tell him where to find it.
In 1981, Kreisel published The Almost Meeting, a collection of short stories. In 1985 his internment diary and other autobiographical writings were combined with critical essays on his work in Another Country: Writings By and About Henry Kreisel. In November 1990, a five-part drama, "Enemy Alien," based on Kreisel's journal of his internment, was aired on CBC Radio's Morningside.
Dr Kreisel was the recipient of numerous honors. He was appointed an officer of the Order of Canada in 1988, and in 1990 he received an Immigrant Achievement Award for his contributions to his adopted country. Other recognition included the Sir Frederick Haultain Prize for Significant Achievement in Fine Arts (1986) and fellowship in the International Association of Arts and Letters, Geneva (1961).
Kreisel once said that it was his belief that "the aim of teaching is simply to light a fire." That he lit many fires was testified to when he won one of the University's Rutherford Teaching Awards in 1986. It is further demonstrated by the sorrow with which his passing has been met.
Source:
http://www.ualberta.ca/ALUMNI/history/peoplep-z/91sumgone.htm