Werner J. Deiman collection

1949-1990

Werner Deiman was born on September 15, 1937. He spent his childhood as prodigy at the piano, once appearing on the Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour. He attended Washington and Lee as an English major, receiving several scholarships and a fine arts award for piano performance. From there, he went to Yale where he got a Ph. D. under the teachings of R. W. B. Lewis and Cleanth Brooks. Deiman received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and studied at the University of Munich on a Fulbright Fellowship. Deiman then became a literature professor at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine from 1964-1991, but continually found ways to connect his passion for music to his love of the written word. At Bates he also taught courses in Romantic literature, the Aesthetic Movement, the Bloomsbury Group, modern British literature, and modern European literature. He published on both John Ruskin and Virginia Woolf, and served for years as a scathing music critic for the Maine Sunday Telegram. Deiman was also a philanthropist; having made regular donations to the Frannie Peabody Center, an organization committed to providing care for the community infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS in Maine. He left his teaching career after suffering a stroke in the early 1990s and retired as professor emeritus of English in 2003. He lived with his partner, author Bradley Daziel, until Daziel's death in 1994.

Werner Deiman died on February 5, 2009. His surviving next-of-kin included a brother, Frank Deiman.