Harold Bernard Segel's Obituary
Harold B. Segel, 85, died March 16, 2016 of an apparent stroke. Born in Boston on September 13, 1930, he was the son of Abraham B. and Florence A. Segel of Brookline, MA. Considered by many as the dean of international Slavic scholars, Harold was professor emeritus of Slavic literatures and of comparative literature at Columbia University. He graduated from Boston Latin School in 1947, Boston College in 1951 with a degree in modern languages and Harvard University with a Ph. D. in Slavic languages and literatures in 1955. He began his teaching career at the University of Florida in 1955 and in January of 1959 joined the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. At Columbia, he held appointments in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of the Arts, the School of International and Public Affairs, and the School of General Studies. He was director of graduate studies in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, 1977-80; member, Council for Research in the Humanities, Columbia University, 1977-79; chairman of the Council, 1978-79; member, the Columbia University Senate, 1978-80, 1980-82; and director, Institute on East Central Europe, 1978-88. He held visiting professorships at Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stockholm University, Sweden. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Kosciuszko Foundation and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, both in New York, NY. The recipient of numerous fellowships, grants and awards, he was twice decorated in 1975 by the Polish government for contributions on behalf of Polish culture, first at the Ministry of Culture in Warsaw and again at the Polish Consulate in New York. Harold’s extensive publications fall into several areas: Polish literature, Russian literature, East European studies, German and Austrian literatures, and comparative literature. In the field of Polish literature, he was the author of The Major Comedies of Alexander Fredro; Polish Romantic Drama; Renaissance Culture in Poland: The Rise of Humanism, 1470-1543; Stranger in Our Midst: Images of the Jew in Polish Literature; and Political Thought in Renaissance Poland: An Anthology in English. He was also an editor of Poles and Jews: Myth and Reality in the Historical Context. His translation of Aleksander Fredro’s Topsy Turvy Talk, Being the Napoleonic Memoirs of Count Alexander Fredro, initiated the Polish Review Library of Polish Classics series. In the field of Russian literature, he published: The Literature of Eighteenth-Century Russia: A History and Anthology in two volumes; The Trilogy of Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin; Twentieth-Century Russian Drama from Gorky to the Present and The Walls Behind the Curtain: East European Prison Literature, 1945-1990. In the field of East European studies, he was the author of The Columbia Guide to the Literatures of Eastern Europe Since 1945 and The Columbia Literary History of Eastern Europe Since 1945. In the field of Austrian and German literatures, he published: The Vienna Coffeehouse Wits, 1890-1938 (commercially his most successful book), Egon Erwin Kisch: The Raging Reporter and a translation from the German of Travel Shadows by Justinus Kerner. In the field of comparative literature, he published: The Baroque Poem: A Comparative Survey; Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret: Paris, Barcelona, Berlin Munich, Vienna, Cracow, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Zurich; Pinocchio’s Progeny: Puppets, Marionettes, Robots, and Automatons in Modernist and Avant-Garde Drama; and Body Ascendant: Modernism and the Physical Imperative. He is survived by his wife, Jeannette Jung Segel of Tucson and son, Abbott Gerson Segel, of New York, NY. At the request of the family services will be private. Arrangements by Evergreen Mortuary.
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