John Rothenberg

Colleagues will be sorry to learn of the death, on 4 October 2018, of Dr John Rothenberg, former Lecturer in the Department of French.

John was appointed as Assistant Lecturer in the Department of French Language and Literature in 1963, becoming Lecturer in 1996. 

His specialist areas were twentieth-century theatre and novel, and he published extensively on the work of Nathalie Sarraute as well as on Jean Anouilh, Samuel Beckett, Michel de Ghelderode, Georges Neveux and Christiane Rochefort. He is remembered with great affection by his colleagues as a gentle and civilised man, a most positive presence for colleagues and students alike, and it was always a pleasure to see him in the Department after he retired. Music was an extremely important part of his life, and he played the clarinet (and his wife Judith the cello) with the Leeds Haydn Players. There was no funeral as he donated his body to the University for medical research.   He is survived by Judith. 

John retired in 2004 after forty-one years’ service to the University.

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