Mitchell, Robert McBurney

Robert McBurney Mitchell (1879-1956), professor of Germanic languages and literature, was born in Lake Mills, Wisconsin, on December 31, 1879. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1903. He studied at the Universities of Berlin, Freiburg, and Munich, and taught for a year at Dartmouth before he came to Brown in 1907 as an instructor. In 1914 he received his Ph.D. degree from Brown and was promoted to assistant professor. In 1938 he was named full professor. He made a special adaptation of Everyman for a Sock and Buskin production in 1929 and prepared the text of Kleist’s Prince Frederick of Homburg for its first American performance by Sock and Buskin in 1935. He retired in 1947 and died on April 12, 1956 in Seattle, Washington.