Acknowledgements
This book is a revised version of my dissertation, handed in at the University of Heidelberg in 2024. It is a product of over four years of hard work, dedication, conversation, dis-and encouragement, dead ends and breakthroughs. But it is by no means the product of a single person sitting in a secluded cabin somewhere in nature, even though it may have felt like that at times (and despite the image’s Romantic allure). I am enormously grateful for the opportunity to pursue such an endeavor, and could not have done it without the people, networks and institutions whose support have so fundamentally shaped it. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisors, Prof. Dr. Günter Leypoldt and Prof. Dr. Jan Stievermann, for their patience, kindness and trust in my project, for reading and reviewing chapters, outlines and abstracts, and sharing their expertise to guide me in the research and writing process. I’d also like to thank my friends and colleagues for reading, re-reading and proofreading the chapters for the final manuscript: Philine Schiller, Philipp Leonhardt, PD Dr. Philipp Löffler, Tanya Gautam, Kieran Sommer, Andrin Albrecht, Luca Bergfelder and Valentina Lopez-Liendo. A great deal of credit is also owed to Miriam Compton, who proofread the book from start to finish and taught me more about the English language than I thought I was still capable of learning. Further thanks go out to the participants of the 2023 Spring Academy at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies, who gave me some essential pointers. Speaking of the HCA, thanks for all the people who made me feel so welcome there while I worked as a research assistant/associate—you know who you are. I also wish to thank the people working at the Stanford Special Collections Archive and the Ginsberg Estate: Tim Noakes, Rebecca Wingfield and Peter Hale, who manages the estate and helped me enormously with the copyright process. My parents also played no small role in this endeavor, as they continuously and tirelessly encouraged me to stay on my path and supported me every step of the way, despite not understanding precisely what I was writing about.
Any PhD student has to live off something—life does not pay for itself. My enormous gratitude goes out to the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) for their generous financial and ideational support. I also want to thank the Görres Foundation for supporting the publication of this book, and to Prof. Dr. Matthias Bauer for facilitating the publication process and the communication with the publisher.
Finally, my gratitude goes to my wife and the love of my life, Alessia-Valeska Schieron, for helping me through the most difficult phases, for making the best phases even better, for enduring my stress levels and for loving me the way I am. You make me happy every day, and I am fortunate to have you in my life.
Heidelberg, May 2025 Jonas Faust