Hartmut Lutz was born in Rendsburg, Schleswig-Holstein, three months after the liberation of Auschwitz and twelve days before the armistice ended the German Nazi terror. After school, he first worked with mentally impaired people in England and Sweden and then obtained a teaching degree at Pädagogische Hochschule Kiel, including two semesters at SUNY Fredonia. His doctorate (Tübingen) was on psychoanalysis and literature, William Goldings Prosawerk (1975), his Habilitation (Osnabrück) on Indian stereotyping in U.S. and German cultures, “Indianer” und “Native Americans” (1985). He first taught English Literature and then North American Literatures and Cultures, focusing on works by Indigenous authors. He coined the term “Indianthusiasm” (Indianertümelei) for the German (and others’) romanticizing fascination with “Indians.” After working at the universities of Cologne and Osnabrück in West Germany, he chaired North American Literatures and Cultures at the University of Greifswald until his mandatory retirement in 2011, when he accepted for one year a professorship in North American Studies at the University of Szczecin (Poland). Throughout his career, years of sponsored research and multiple guest professorships took Hartmut to Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Poland, Romania, Spain, and the United States. Among his many books are: D-Q University (1980), Minority Literatures in North America (1989), Contemporary Challenges: Conversations with Canadian Native Authors (Saskatoon 1991), Connections (Delhi 2003), The Diary of Abraham Ulrikab (Ottawa, 2005), Howard Adams ‘Otapaway’ (Saskatoon, 2005), Contemporary Achievements (2015), and most recently Indianthusiasm: Indigenous Responses (Waterloo, ON 2020). His autobiographical Turtle Island Memories will come out in Ottawa in 2026. His awards include Fulbright-, ACLS-, and DAAD-fellowships, the Harris Chair (Dartmouth College), and the Canadian Government’s Diefenbaker Award (Ottawa U). In 1921, Hartmut Lutz was inducted as an International Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for his pioneering work “in the field of Indigenous literary studies in Canada and the US.”