Lenora D. Wolfgang

Lenora D. Wolfgang was a French professor emeritus at Lehigh University, a literary researcher, author, teacher, mentor, and artist who spent decades making medieval French poetry accessible to students and scholars. She died on May 14, 2026, of heart failure at her home near the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She was 91.

Born Lenora Divida Poden on September 25, 1934, in Philadelphia, she grew up in a family whose parents had emigrated from Poland and Romania. Her mother left the family when Wolfgang was in junior high school. She and her father hid their Jewish heritage and altered their last name to reduce antisemitic attacks. Despite those challenges, she excelled academically. She was valedictorian of her 1952 class at Philadelphia High School for Girls and of her 1956 undergraduate class at the University of Pennsylvania's College for Women.

She had planned to study art in Paris after high school and live as a painter. At Girls' High she became so enthralled by the French language that she changed course, earning bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in French at Penn. Inspired by her professors, she became an expert in medieval French language and literature. Her doctoral dissertation and first book analyzed an 800-verse prologue to a 13th-century French poem. She studied in France on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1956 and 1957, and in Spain on a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies in 1978. She wrote two books on French poetry, held research fellowships with the National Endowment for the Humanities in the 1980s and 1990s, and received a grant from the American Philosophical Society in 1981 to transcribe manuscripts at the National Library in Paris. In 1990, reviewers at Penn's French Forum journal said her second book on 13th-century French poetry provided scholars with a standard text and thorough apparatus that would serve current and future generations well.

Before joining Lehigh she taught French at Temple and Rutgers Universities, at Penn, and in Philadelphia high schools. She joined Lehigh's Department of Modern Languages and Literature in 1980 and taught there for 26 years, commuting three hours round trip from West Philadelphia to Bethlehem three days a week. She was promoted to associate professor in 1986 and to full professor in 1989, retiring in 2006. Students and colleagues knew her as Madame Wolfgang. Former colleagues called her a true mentor and a real mensch, and recalled that she wanted younger faculty to succeed. After retirement she taught continuing education classes on Moliere and other topics at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Temple, and briefly returned there as a student after the COVID-19 lockdown.

She married Marvin Wolfgang, a professor at Penn, in 1957. They had daughters Karen and Nina and lived in University City, where The Inquirer once featured their French-inspired Gothic house. Marvin died in 1998. She married Leon Salganicoff, a professor emeritus at Temple, in 2010; he died in 2011. Adept at painting as a girl and later a photographer who showed work at Penn's Faculty Club, she was an avid reader who traveled the world, listened to classical music, and enjoyed hosting dinner parties. She is survived by her daughters, two grandsons, a great-grandson, and other relatives. A brother died earlier. Friends and family remembered her as brilliant and fun, and said everyone loved her.