Wolfgang Kayser (born 24 December 1906 in Berlin; died 23 January 1960 in Göttingen) was a German Germanist and scholar of literature.
Kayser earned his doctorate in 1932 with a thesis on the poetry of Baroque poet Harsdörffer, and his habilitation in 1935, writing about the history of the German ballad.
In 1941 he was appointed director of the German Cultural Institute in Lisbon,[1] which role he described as that of "an adjunct professor in the Imperial Service.
During that period he was already at work on what would become his pioneering textbook, Das Sprachliche Kunstwerk: Eine Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft (The Language of Art: An Introduction to the Literature).
As German literary studies shook off the control of the politicization that had held sway during the Nazi era, and scholars turned toward increasingly European and multidisciplinary literary scholarship, Kayser gained an international reputation.