Frank Trommler has been a member of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania since 1970, first as an Associate Professor, since 1974 as a Professor. He has taught courses in German language, literature and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, since 1985, also in Comparative Literature. A Guggenheim Fellow in 1984/85, Trommler was President of the AATG chapter Philadelphia in 1986-1990, President of the German Studies Association in 1991/92, and Director of the Humanities Program at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies in Washington, DC, from 1995-2003. In 2004 he was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz by the President of the Federal Republic for his work in the field of American-German relations. Trommler published the first comprehensive study of German cultural diplomacy with France, Britain, United States, Russia, Poland, and Italy in 2014 under the title, Kulturmacht ohne Kompass: Deutsche auswärtige Kulturbeziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert.