Pascal was elected a
fellow of Pembroke in 1929; between 1934 and 1936, he was university lecturer in German, and then returned to Pembroke as a fellow (until 1939), when he was appointed Professor of German at the
University of Birmingham, in which position he remained until 1969. At Cambridge, he taught German at Pembroke and his pupils included
C. P. Magill, Trevor Jones and
F. J. Stopp. He also lectured on
Baroque literature and the
Reformation, the former being a topic barely studied in English universities at the time. His lectures on
Martin Luther formed the basis of his first book,
The Social Basis of the German Reformation: Luther and his Times (1933). It was a
Marxist endeavour, and an attempt to connect German literature with its social and cultural context. After returning to Cambridge, Pascal joined the
Labour Party (he would be greatly inspired by the literature of the German left during the 1920s and early 1930s) and believed that, in the midst of
hyperinflation and the
Wall Street crash, British
reparation demands were damaging moderate political parties and radicalising German politics. In the United Kingdom, Pascal also sympathised with the
Communist Party; his far left politics and his advocacy over reparations and Germany joining the
League of Nations meant that his fellowship at Pembroke was not renewed after five years (although he remained at Cambridge as a lecturer). Pascal continued to protest the emergence of the
far right in Germany; his 1934 book
The Nazi Dictatorship outlined his critique of
Hitler's regime, and in 1936 he unsuccessfully proposed that the
Conference of University Teachers of German formally condemn the treatment of Jewish and liberal academics in Germany. His chair at Birmingham allowed Pascal to reform the curriculum for German teaching; he aimed for it to emphasise the connections between literature, cultural, history and society, and appointed
Bill Lockwood,
Richard Hinton Thomas and
Siegbert Prawer, among others, to the department. After the fall of Nazi Germany, Pascal's works focused more fully on literary subjects.
The German Sturm und Drang appeared in 1953, followed by
The German Novel three years later, and
Design and Truth in Autobiography in 1960. He also authored
From Naturalism to Expressionism (1973),
The Dual Voice (1977) and ''Kafka's Narrators
(1982; published posthumously). Amid growing critique and protest from some students in his department, Pascal secured early retirement in 1969 and resigned from his chair, before spending a year as visiting professor at McMaster University, Canada. In retirement, he continued researching and writing, but his health gradually failed over the course of the 1970s. He died of heart failure on 24 August 1980 at his home on Witherford Way, Selly Oak, Birmingham. He had met his wife, Fania (or Feiga; née'' Polianovskaya, daughter of Moses, a timber merchant) in Berlin, and she survived him, as did their two daughters. == Honours, awards, assessment and legacy ==