From Paul Iversen (paul.iversen@cwru.edu):
Martin Helzle, former professor of Classics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest at his home in Gartow, Germany just two days shy of his 61st birthday. From 1971-1980 Professor Helzle attended Hölderlingymnasium in his native Nürtingen, in southwest Germany. After his Abitur, he attended the University of Leeds from 1980 to 1983, where he earned BAs in both English and Latin. From 1983 to 1988 he earned his PhD in Classics from St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he served as a Teaching Assistant and wrote a dissertation entitled P. Ovidii Nasonis Epistularum ex Ponto liber IV: A Commentary on Poems 1-7 and 16. During this time he was also a Lecturer in Classics at University of Bristol (1986-7) and at the University of Wales, Bangor (1987-88). In 1988 he moved to Cleveland, and in the spring of 1989 taught part-time at both Cleveland State University and nearby John Carroll University and at the same published his dissertation with Olms Verlag. Then he was hired as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University for the 1989-90 school year, and in the next year was promoted to Assistant Professor, where he earned tenure in 1996 with the publication of Der Stil ist der Mensch. Redner und Reden im römischen Epos (Teubner). In 1999 he began to serve as the Department Chair, and in 2004 he was promoted to Full Professor after the publication of Ovid. Epistulae ex Ponto. Buch I-II. Kommentar (Universitätsverlag Winter, 2002). He was very active in both the OCC and CAMWS (hosting the 95th meeting of the latter at CWRU in the spring of 1999) and was an extremely popular teacher at CWRU. In the summer of 2005, however, he attended his Gymnasium’s 25th reunion, and there he reconnected with his beloved Birgit Hartmann-Puk. The two would strike up a long-distance relationship, in 2009 they married, and at the end of the 2009- 10 year he resigned from CWRU and moved back to his native Germany to be with Birgit full time. There in Wertheim am Main he taught Latin and English at a local Gymnasium, and in 2015 he and Birgit moved to Gartow, Germany where he again taught Latin and English at a Gymnasium. In all this time he remained connected to many of us in the Department. He was an excellent colleague and friend and will be sorely missed. Requiescas in pace, amice magne.