The Department of Languages mourns the passing of Margit Sinka, professor emerita of German, who passed away on October 28, 2018 at the age of 76.
Margit was born during World War II in Hungary. She and her parents moved to Vienna, Austria, before immigrating to the U.S. and settling in a Hungarian neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. Margit was trilingual in Hungarian, German, and English; she also developed some fluency in Spanish. She earned her Ph.D. in German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Margit was a member of the Clemson faculty for 33 years. She taught intermediate and advanced German language and literature courses and served as the head of the department’s German section. Her research focused on Medieval German Literature, Modernism (German prose and drama), Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Culture with an emphasis on Berlin Studies, Holocaust Memory and Representation, and German Cinema. During her career at Clemson, Margit held several important national and regional positions in the field of German, and in 2008, she received the Merit Award from the national American Association of German Teachers and the New York Goethe Institute. After retiring in 2007, she continued to work part-time and conducted five-week Clemson University summer study abroad programs on Holocaust Remembrance in Brussels and Berlin.
Assistant professor of German Gabi Stoicea recalled Margit as “energetic, jovial, and very enthusiastic about Clemson and about our department in particular.”
Margit’s memorial service will take place at 2 p.m. on December 1, 2018 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Clemson, 226 Pendleton Road, Clemson.
Click here to read the Inside Clemson obituary.
