“George Steiner is a master of the word and one of the few figures who has the universal knowledge of our times.”

From the speech of Joschka Fischer, president of the jury of the Ludwig-Boerne Prize 2003 for Literary Essays and Criticism, awarded to Professor Steiner.



George Steiner (Paris, 1929), born to Austrian Jewish parents, was educated in the United States during World War II by teachers of the stature of Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Maritain. He also received training in Paris, Chicago, Boston, Oxford and Cambridge.

He is one of the most highly acknowledged scholars of European culture and has taught at the American universities of Stanford, New York and Princeton, although his academic career has unfolded mainly in Geneva and England. He is considered a master of comparative literature because he combines, precisely, the foremost traits of the profile of a great critic of Western thought: he is a polyglot, a philologist and a humanist always astride diverse cultures. One may speak in this case of a clear example of an alliance between erudition and solid cosmopolitanism.

His work as a critic, which he has extended to regular contributions to such journals as The New Yorker and TLS, have set Steiner at the head of the world references in this field.

The titles of his many books reflect clearly his concerns: The Death of Tragedy, Language and Silence, After Babel, Antigones, Real Presences, Extraterritorial, Nostalgia for the Absolute, No Passion Spent, Errata, Grammars of Creation, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, Heidegger, Barbarie de l’ignorance, The Idea of Europe, Ten Possible Reasons for the Sadness of Thought, and My Unwritten Books, among others.

Professor George Steiner has received the Prince of Asturias Prize in Communication and Humanities (2001), the Ludwig-Boerne Prize (2003) and the Alfonso Reyes International Prize of the National Council for Culture and the Arts of Mexico (2007).