里尔克

Hans Egon Holthusen (April 15, 1913 – January 21, 1997) was a German lyric poet, essayist, and literary scholar.

Holthusen was born in Rendsburg the Province of Schleswig-Holstein, the son of a Protestant clergyman. He studied German philology, history, and philosophy at the universities of Tübingen, Berlin, and Munich, gaining reputation as a Rilke scholar with the publication of his Rilkes Sonette an Orpheus: Versuch einer Interpretation in 1937, at the age of 24.

Holthusen was a member of the SS (since 1933) and of the Nazi Party (since 1937). During the Second World War, between 1939 and 1944, he served in the German army. In the early 1960s, Holthusen worked at the Goethe-Institut in New York City, subsequently obtaining a professorship at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, a post which he held until 1981. In 1960, Mascha Kaléko refused the Berlin Theodor Fontane Price because Holthusen was a jury member.

Holthusen died in Munich.