Obituary: Hans E. Panofsky

Hans E. Panofsky, Curator Emeritus of Northwestern University's Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, died in Madison, Wisconsin, on July 1, 2013. Hans was appointed the Herskovits Library's first curator in 1959 and retired in 1991. His engagement with the Herskovits Library, Northwestern's Program of African Studies as well as African studies world-wide continued well beyond his retirement. Until just a few years ago, Hans regularly attended Program of African Studies lectures and never missed a visit to the library whenever he was on campus.Hans was born in Berlin in 1926. From 1939 until 1943 he attended the Mill Hill School in London followed by a year at the London School of Economics. He served in the British military from 1944 until 1947. Hans moved to the United States in 1951 to study at Columbia University from which he received two degrees: a B.S. (Sociology) in 1951 and an M.S. (Library Service) in 1952.In 1952, Hans was appointed Reference Librarian at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University. Hans pursued an M.S. in labor economics at Cornell which he received in 1958. A copy of his thesis, "The Significance of Labor Migration for the Economic Growth of Ghana", is among the Herskovits Library's holdings. While at Cornell, Hans met Gianna Sommi. They were married in Parma, Italy, in 1958 and arrived at Northwestern shortly after where their home became a centre of Africanist hospitality at Northwestern as important as the Herskovits Library and the Program of African Studies. Gianna died in 2010. Hans is survived by two sons, David and John, their spouses and children.In 1959, the development of research collections in area studies was a relatively new concept. Hans became a leader for African studies by building the resources of the Herskovits Library and through participation in the African Studies Association (ASA) and its Africana Librarians Council (ALC). Hans played a major role in the creation of the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP) of the Center for Research Libraries. Through the years, Hans held just about every position of responsibility possible in the ALC and CAMP. Hans served as a member of the ASA's Board of Directors from 1977 until 1980. In 1985 Hans was the recipient of the ASA's Distinguished Service to African Studies Award. Through the years, Hans participated in many SCOLMA conferences including presenting a paper at SCOLMA's silver jubilee conference in 1987. Hans also served on the board of the International African Institute (IAI) from 1987 until 1995.In honor of Hans' thirty years of service to Northwestern and to African studies librarianship, the ALC presented him with a festschriftin 1989, Africana Resources and Collections: Three Decades of Development and African Research & Documentation No. …