Every two years, the Richard M. Meyer Foundation, in collaboration with Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU) and Freie Universität Berlin, awards the Scherer Prize for outstanding doctoral theses and postdoctoral theses in the field of early and modern German literature. This year, the literary scholar Dr Hendrik Blumentrath has been awarded the 2026 Scherer Prize for his postdoctoral habilitation thesis submitted at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The prize, worth 5,000 euros, recognises his work *Nemesis: Measure and Fate around 1800*.
“I would like to offer my warmest congratulations to Dr Hendrik Blumentrath on receiving the Scherer Prize. This award recognises the outstanding quality of his habilitation thesis. In his research on the Nemesis tradition, he impressively demonstrates how a historically grounded literary studies can reframe fundamental questions regarding the conditions and possibilities of human action in times of social upheaval. In this way, it contributes to a deeper understanding of our present and sets standards that extend far beyond his own field of expertise. At the same time, this is a very welcome sign for the Department of German Literature,” said Prof. Dr Claudia Mareis, the Presidium’s representative for research at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
“In his postdoctoral habilitation thesis, Hendrik Blumentrath reconstructs the Nemesis tradition from its very beginnings and convincingly demonstrates how, following Herder’s 1786 essay, a very specific interest in the concept of Nemesis emerged in Weimar. This richly documented and conceptually highly sophisticated work on a modern case of mythogenesis impressively combines the history of ideas, literary history and mythography,” said Nils Fiebig, spokesperson for the Board of the Richard M. Meyer Foundation.
On the award winner’s habilitation thesis
The award winner’s habilitation thesis examines a figure of measure around 1800: the Greek Nemesis, as a measuring goddess, experiences a renaissance in literature, aesthetics and the philosophy of history. In doing so, she becomes both the hallmark of an experience of contingency and an operative figure of thought, in which the question of a higher measure — be it divine, natural or social — is brought together with the question of the individual possibilities of human action. Literature lies at the heart of these doctrines of measure: it is conceived equally as a school of aesthetic measurement and as a poetic doctrine of experience. Building on ancient conceptions of Nemesis, this study reconstructs her functionalisation around 1800: central to this is her role, for instance, in the late work of Johann Gottfried Herder, who elevates her to the guiding principle of his philosophy of history, his genre poetics and his journal project Adrastea; in Friedrich Schiller’s attempts to make the category of measure productive for his work on the form of tragedy; and finally, for the genre of the drama of fate, whose spectacle—mocking all moderation—guaranteed box-office success for over two decades. This thesis contributes to the literary and cultural history of moderation by disentangling the category from the juxtaposition of morality and instruments of measurement, and reconstructing it as a constellation of aesthetic concepts, instrumental practices, standardisation processes and theories of affect. The reviewers for the habilitation were Prof. Dr Ethel Matala de Mazza, Prof. Dr Steffen Martus and Prof. Dr Juliane Vogel.
About the award winner
Hendrik Blumentrath is currently a visiting professor at the Department of German Literature at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; previously, he held the full professorship for Modern German Literature of the 17th and 18th Centuries at the University of Vienna. His research interests include the literary history of aesthetic form, the relationship between literature and other practices of signification, concepts and figures of enmity, and the props and materiality of drama.
A total of five doctoral theses and postdoctoral theses were nominated for the Scherer Prize.