Jan Philipp Reemtsma

Jan Philipp Fürchtegott Reemtsma (born 26 November 1952) is a German literary scholar, author, and patron who founded and was the long-term director of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research.

[2] The son of cigarette manufacturer Philipp Fürchtegott Reemtsma [de] and Gertrud Reemtsma[3] (née Zülch),[4][5] he studied German literature and philosophy at the University of Hamburg (PhD), where he has been active as a professor of German literature since 1996.

[13] Reemtsma founded the Arno-Schmidt-Stiftung [de] (Arno Schmidt Foundation) in 1981.

Reemtsma has also written a bestselling account of his experiences during a 1996 kidnapping (published in German as Im Keller in 1997, in English as In the Cellar in 1999, in French as Dans la cave in 2000 as well as in many other languages).

[18][19] The three research units of the HIS are:[20] Reemtsma also headed the 1995 project Violence and Destructiveness in the Twentieth Century (Gewalt und Destruktivität im 20.