Wolfgang Victor Ruttkowski

Wolfgang Victor Ruttkowski is a scholar of literature and culture. He has written four works of comparative literature and psychology of art, now considered standards of their genre. Born in 1935 in Silesia, he began his studies in 1961 at the University of Vienna studying theatre arts and at the University of Göttingen, mainly German and comparative literature under Wolfgang Kayser. After the latter's unexpected death, he received a DAAD-scholarship at McGill university in Montreal/Canada. He obtained his PhD on the subject of cabaret ballads in Germany after which he was invited by Göttingen University for an oral examination, after which he also received the German Dr.Phil. The idea of this topic, formerly never dealt with in a scholarly fashion, came from his nightly performances in cabarets and nightclubs, where he sang German and French cabaret songs and American jazz standards.
His dissertation was published by Francke in Bern and immediately made his name in the scholarly world. He accepted a guest professorship at Tokyo University. There he found time to pursue his interest in "audience-related" literature, of which the cabaret song is the most obvious example.