Sture Packalén is professor of German at Mälardalen University in Sweden. He started out as a student of German literature at the University of Uppsala, Sweden and University of Konstanz, Germany and also at the University of California Davis, USA. In 1986 he gained his Ph.D. for a thesis entitled Zum Hölderlinbild in der Bundesrepublik und der DDR at Uppsala University. He has been employed by the Akademie der Künste in Berlin to take care of the literary remains of Peter Weiss; he has also been a research fellow for The Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSFR) and assistant professor at the University of Uppsala. Since 1988 he has had the chief responsibility for German language literature for the Swedish National Encyclopaedia, Nationalencyklopedin. He is a member of the board of the Zentrum für Deutschlandsstudien in Stockholm. Sture Packalén has published several literary articles in the field of modern German literature. He is the author of a number of textbooks, among others an introduction to the history of German literature, Literatur und Leben, 2002.