Stephane Moses (1931–2007)

Stéphane Mosès was born to a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany. In 1938, his family fled the Nazis to Casablanca, Morocco. He attended the lycée Lyautey, where he passed his baccalauréat. He went on to study at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he passed the agrégé (national teaching exam) in German and earned a doctor of letters degree. He became an assistant professor at the Sorbonne and at Paris X-Nanterre University. A specialist in philosophy and German literature, he helped popularize the works of Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Franz Kafka, and Paul Celan. In 1969, he moved to Israel and became a professor of German and comparative literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He published a dozen books, including A Literary Affinity: Jean-Paul's Titan and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus (1972) and The Angel of History: Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Scholem (1992). He married artist Liliane Klapisch and the couple had three children, including writer Emmanuel Moses.