Eva Engel-Holland

Eva J. Engel, later known as Eva Engel-Holland (18 August 1919 in Dortmund – 30 August 2013 in Göttingen) was a scholar of German studies and an important editor of the collected works of Moses Mendelssohn.

Biography Eva Johanna Engel, born in 1919, was the oldest of three children in a Jewish family in Dortmund. Her father, Stefan Engel, was a pediatrician and professor of pediatrics. She grew up in Westend, Berlin. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Engel family faced growing oppression under Nazism, and they emigrated in 1936 to Great Britain and settled in London. The mother, Margerethe Katharina, née Litten, died there two years later. She then taught at the University of London, Cambridge University, and Keele University, and she was a visiting professor at Harvard University. In 1967 she was appointed a professor of German studies at Wellesley College, near Boston. In the United States she met Orthodox Rabbi Alexander Altmann, the editor of the anniversary edition of Moses Mendelssohn's collected works, with whom she then collaborated.

Eva Engel was married to Albert Edward Holland (1912–1984), a historian and early president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges as well as vice-president of Wellesley College. On 14 October 2013 her ashes were interred in the RuheForst Vorharz in Heiningen, Lower Saxony.

Work Engel became fascinated by Moses Mendelssohn in the mid-1950s after she began her research into the late Enlightenment philosopher Karl Philipp Moritz and the view of Jewish philosophers on the autonomy of art. Beginning in 1972 she was the editor of the critical edition of the works of Moses Mendelssohn, comprising one-fourth of his complete works.

After the death of her husband, Engel returned to German in 1984. Alexander Altmann died in 1987. According to his wishes she became co-editor of the anniversary edition of Moses Mendelssohn: Collected Works. She worked from 1988 in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, whose director, Paul Raabe, supported her research project on Mendelssohn's work by arranging for a grant from the German Research Foundation and providing a work room. Under the editorship of Altmann and Engel, the number of published volumes increased to 33.

Her own publications, beginning in 1960, encompassed some 13 books and 30 extensive essays on Moses Mendelssohn and on the intellectual history of the 18th century.

Writings (selected) Jean Paul's Schulmeisterlein Wutz, 1962 German Narrative Prose, two volumes, London 1965 and 1968 Moses Mendelssohns Briefwechsel mit Lessing, Abbt und Iselin, 1994 Neues zur Lessing-Forschung (mit Ingrid Strohschneider-Kohrs und Claus Ritterhoff), 1998 Moses Mendelssohn und die europäische Aufklärung. Der "Sokrates des 18. Jahrhunderts", 1999 (Hrsg. mit Michael Albrecht): Moses Mendelssohn im Spannungsfeld der Aufklärung, 2000 Judentum - Wege zur geistigen Befreiung. Dessauer Herbstseminare 2000 und 2001 zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, 2002 Moses Mendelssohn und Shakespeare, in: Roger Paulin: Shakespeare im 18. Jahrhundert, Wallstein Verlag 2007, S. 157f.