Horst Daemmrich, an influential German professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a prolific writer, died at his Flourtown home, aged 91, writes Gary Miles for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Horst Daemmrich, who was a former chairman of the department of Germanic languages and literature at Penn, taught at the university from 1981 to 1998.

He published over a dozen books and numerous articles on German literature and related topics.

He was an engaging lecturer who was universally popular among his students. He was recognized with several awards, including Penn’s Ira H. Abrams Award in 1990 for teaching that was “intellectually rigorous and exceptionally coherent.”

His enthusiasm for literature was impossible to exaggerate, according to his students.

During a commencement address at Wayne State University in 1979, he told students to “read and you will discover beauty and truth, contemplation and action, aesthetics and ethics. Reading will open realms that remain closed to us in ordinary life.”

Together with his wife, Ingrid, a professor of English and literature at Drexel University, Daemmrich established the annual Arthur M. Daemmrich and Alfred Guenther Memorial Prize in 1994 to honor their fathers.

Read more about Horst Daemmrich and his life in The Philadelphia Inquirer.