Background
Peter Ganz was the son of Doctor Hermann Friedrich Ignaz Ganz and Doctor Charlotte (Lotte), née Fromberg.
germanist philologist university professor
Peter Ganz was the son of Doctor Hermann Friedrich Ignaz Ganz and Doctor Charlotte (Lotte), née Fromberg.
He attended the Realgymnasium in Mainz but was forced to leave it since his family was classed as Jewish.
In November 1938, he was held for six weeks in the concentration camp at Buchenwald but was able to emigrate to England after that. After internment in the Isle of Manitoba, he joined the Pioneer Corps, then worked for CSDIC with Fritz Lustig. At the end of the war he worked at Farm Hall listening to the captured Nuclear scientists as the atom Bomb went off including Heisenberg Otto Hahn and others
Peter Ganz worked as Assistant Lecturer at Royal Holloway College, London 1948-1949.
Lecturer in German Philology and Medieval Literature at Westfield College, London 1949-1960. Fellow, Hertford College, Oxford 1963-1972.
Professor of Medieval German Language and Literature and Fellow of Street Edmund Hall, Oxford 1972-1985 (Emeritus) where his successor was Nigel F Palmer (until 2013). Resident Fellow, Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel 1985-1988.
He co-founded the Anglo-German Colloquium, a biennial meeting of British and German medieval Germanists, and edited the Oxford German Studies (1978-1990) and the PBB (1976-1990).