Alexander Rudolf Hohlfeld was born in Dresden, Germany, December 29, 1865. He attended the Annenreal-Gymnasium in Dresden from 1876 to 1884 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig in 1888. In 1889 he came to the United States to join the faculty of Vanderbilt University as Professor of Germanic Languages and later as Dean of the Academic Department. In 1901 he came to the University of Wisconsin where he was appointed chairman of the German Department, a position he maintained from 1904 until his retirement in 1936, when he was given emeritus rank. He was active in forming the Graduate School and guiding it through its early years to a position of eminence. Intent upon linking the University more closely with that larger whole of which it is a part, he was also instrumental in establishing the Carl Schurz Exchange Professorship, which through the years brought to the campus illustrious visiting scholars.
Professor Hohlfeld's field of special competence was Goethe's poetry and philosophy, a subject to which he dedicated himself throughout his life in books and study essays, many of which appeared in distinguished American and European journals and in lectures and addresses before both popular and academic audiences.
Many honors were conferred upon Hohlfeld, the most intangible being that “Hohlfeld of Wisconsin” became a synonym of authority in matters pertaining to the study of German. He was a Past President of the Modern Language Association, Past President of the American Association of Teachers of German, a member of the Goethe Gesellschaft in Weimar and the Goethe Verein of Vienna, and an honorary member of the Deutsche Akademie in Munich. In 1937 the degree of Litt. D. was conferred upon him by Middlebury College. In 1938 a special number of the Monatshefte fur deutsche Unterricht was dedicated to him. In 1951, the city of Frankfurt, Goethe's birthplace, honored Hohlfeld with its Goethe Medal and a handwritten scroll for his contributions to the advancement of Goethe scholarship. And in December of 1955, on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, the German Federal Republic conferred upon Hohlfeld the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit, the highest recognition that that nation can bestow. In addition, Hohlfeld was a member of the governing board of the National German-American Teachers' Seminary in Milwaukee. At its discontinuation in 1926 he was instrumental in the transfer of the Seminary's entire endowment to the University of Wisconsin for the benefit of teacher training work in the Department of German.
In 1890 Alexander Hohlfeld married the former Helen Agatha Voss of Elgin, Illinois, with whom he had four children.
Alexander Hohlfeld died on April 18, 1956.
