Frank Trommler teaches German literature and culture of the 19th and 20th centuries. He did his graduate work at the universities of Berlin, Vienna, and Munich (Dr. Phil., 1965), and has taught as a visiting lecturer at Harvard and as a visiting professor at Princeton and Johns Hopkins. 

Since 1970 he has been a member of the faculty of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a particular interest in Modernism, theater, and the relationship of literature to history, society, and politics. He has authored and edited books on modern German literature as well as on issues of youth, socialism, Germanics, thematics, technology, and German-American cultural relations. 

His publications include: Die Kultur der Weimarer Republik (1978, several reprints), America and the Germans (1985, also in German), Germanistik in den USA (1989), Thematics Reconsidered (1995), Berlin: The New Capital in the East (2000), The German-American Encounter: Conflict and Cooperation between Two Cultures (2001, also in German). 

From 1995 - 2003 Professor Trommler was director of the Humanities Program at The American Institute for Contemporary Studies and editor of fourteen volumes of the AICGS Humanities Series on Contemporary German Studies.

In the Spring of 2005, he taught GRMN 255 "Mann, Hesse, Kafka", and GRMN 648 "Modern German Lyrics". In the Spring of 2006, he taught GRMN 373 "Dancing on the Volcano: Modern German Writers Confront Evil" and GRMN 641 "German Drama of the 19th Century". In the Fall of 2006, he teaches GRMN 269 "Introduction to German Culture and GRMN 642 "Drama of the 20th century".