Dear colleagues,
a year ago our late colleague Professor Frank Shaw sent out the message below, 'Threatened dismissal of Dr Anne Simon'. Many of you responded and I assume you are interested in an update. Professor Shaw's e-mail ends with the words: 'I think there is a case for making the ‘powers that be’ rethink their decision. German in Bristol cannot afford to lose anybody (staff-numbers have already been reduced to four – it was eleven when I was appointed), least of all Anne Simon.'

Since October 2010 Bristol has received numerous letters and calls from colleagues all across the globe and from Dr Simon's past and current students trying to make the 'powers that be' rethink their decision. However, I am sad to inform you that as of the end of the academic session 2010/11 Dr Anne Simon is not employed by The University of Bristol any more. Dr Simon herself is not in a position to comment but to me the fact speaks volumes that this summer she has been awarded the Student Union Award for Outstanding Contribution by a Member of Staff with a phenomenal number of nominations fro students to honour her comittment to teaching and research which I know she would have continued to show in the years to come. A great loss not just for Bristol where students clearly feel the loss of a dedicated teacher but for German Studies and Germanistik.
I hope you will join me in wishing Dr Simon all the best for her future and the energy and support to continue the research she thrieves on and does so brilliantly ... despite it all.
 
Dr Heike Bartel
Associate Professor of German
Dept. of German Studies
University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham NG7 2RD 

 
> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 16:07:56 +0100
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Threatened dismissal of Dr Anne Simon
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Colleagues and lovers of German,
> German departments are being closed, jobs are being axed all over the
> place, so what’s so special about Dr Anne Simon? Three things. Firstly,
> she is my successor, which gives me a particular interest. She was
> appointed to the medieval post in the University of Bristol German
> Department in 1992, two years before I retired from that post in 1994,
> after holding it since 1967 in succession to Dr Estelle Morgan and
> therefore by proxy to August Closs. Secondly, she seems by all accounts to
> have been informed, curtly and unceremoniously, that she was to go without
> the framers of this decision having consulted the rest of the department.
> Thirdly, her departure would deprive the department not only of the only
> colleague able to teach German literature before the modern period (during
> her term of office she has extended medieval studies to medieval and early
> modern studies), but also of the widest-ranging teacher in the department,
> who forays out into the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries (as of course all we
> medievalists do), offering courses on travel literature and on Judaism and
> Islam in the second year. In addition, in her final-year unit on
> Nuremberg, her special field of research interest, she covers not only the
> Hans Sachs period, but also Nuremberg of the NS rallies and the trials, as
> well as the contemporary city. Her departure would leave a
> doctor-candidate without supervisor and break off any link between German
> medieval studies in the neighbouring disciplines of French, Italian and
> Spanish. It is not without relevance that she is a founder-member and
> active participant in the University’s Centre for Medieval Studies, on the
> steering-committees of both the Art Lecture series and the Centre for
> Classical Studies (a book on the Medea legend co-edited by her appeared
> only recently) and has been engaged for many years on a book on the
> importance of Nuremberg in the early modern period. I think there is a
> case for making the ‘powers that be’ rethink their decision. German in
> Bristol cannot afford to lose anybody (staff-numbers have already been
> reduced to four – it was eleven when I was appointed), least of all Anne
> Simon.
> --
> Professor Frank Shaw
> 57 Westbury Road
> BRISTOL
> BS9 3AS
> Tel: 0117 9629578
> Fax: 0117 9622629