The Author: Stephan Maksymiuk was born in Edmonton, Canada in 1962. After graduating from the University of Alberta with a B.A. (Honours) in Germanic Languages and Literatures in 1984, he carried out graduate work in Germanics at the University of Washington in Seattle, U.S.A., where he received his M.A. degree in 1987 and his Ph.D. in 1992. He has taught at the Universities of Washington, Muenster, Dortmund and Freiburg.