ABSTRACT
A NATIVE OF SWITZERLAND, WERNER P. FRIEDERICH (1905-93) was educated at the University of Bern, the Sorbonne and Harvard University, where he received his PhD in comparative literature in 1932. Friederich joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina in 1935 and in 1956 was appointed chairman of comparative literature. He founded and served as an early president for both the American and the International Comparative Literature Association. He also started the Comparative Literature Section of the Modern Language Association of America, co-founded the journal Comparative Literature , and founded and edited the Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature . Friederich conceived of this latter journal as a “bridge between Comparative Literature and World Literature.” In March 1945, Friederich was hired by the Offi ce of War Information as a translator for the American Army in Germany and soon fi red due to the protests by Chapel Hill people, who unjustly claimed Friederich’s Nazi sympathies to be shown in his 1938 pamphlet, “Political Problems in Present-Day Europe.” i In 1972 Friederich established the Marcel Bataillon Professorship in Comparative Literature at UNC in honor of his French friend.
