Erich von Kahler

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Erich von Kahler (also Erich Kahler , born October 14, 1885 in Prague , Austria-Hungary , † June 28, 1970 in Princeton, New Jersey , USA) was a German writer, cultural philosopher and sociologist . Historical sociology and cultural sociology form the methodological basis of his main work.

Life

In 1900 the Jewish family, who had Germanized their name from Kohn zu Kahler, moved from Prague to Vienna, where their father was ennobled as a successful industrialist by Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1914 . Kahler graduated from the humanistic Schottengymnasium in 1903 . As a teenager he published collections of poetry, he studied history and philosophy in Berlin, Heidelberg, Munich and Vienna, where in 1911 he was awarded a doctorate with the work “On Law and Morals”. phil. received his doctorate. From 1912 the wealthy Kahler lived as a private scholar in Wolfratshausen near Munich, belonged to the George circle and was in regular contact with Friedrich Gundolf and Max Weber . Thomas Mann had known von Kahler since 1919 and had been on friendly terms with him since their time together at Princeton. Von Kahler is regularly mentioned in Thomas Mann's diaries; They were in correspondence until Mann's death. Von Kahler published many articles on Mann's work. In an essay on Kahler's 60th birthday in 1945, Thomas Mann called him "one of the brightest, finest and richest minds at work today, one of the kindest, most knowledgeable and most willing hearts that beat today."

After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, von Kahler did not return to Germany from a visit to Austria; on January 22, 1934 he was expatriated. He emigrated in stages via Czechoslovakia (Prague) and Switzerland (Zurich, 1935–38) to the USA , where his title of nobility was no longer emphasized. He lived in Princeton , New Jersey until his death . Kahler taught history and philosophy of history at the New School for Social Research (New York) and Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the United States . In 1947 he took over a professorship for German literature at Cornell University in Ithaca. He was visiting professor at the University of Manchester in England, Ohio State University and Princeton University , where he read sociology of culture at the Institute for Advanced Study . During the Second World War he housed the emigrated poet Hermann Broch in his house. He did not return to Germany - no German university appointed him to a chair - but accepted a few teaching posts in the Federal Republic. Since 1957 he was a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry .

Kahler married Josefine Sóbotka (1889–1959) in 1911. One cousin was the expressionist painter and poet Eugen von Kahler, who died early .

plant

Erich von Kahler followed the scientific and journalistic mainstream when in 1914 he published his war pamphlet “The previous, today's and future enemy”. After the First World War , von Kahler reacted with his book “The Profession of Science” to the similar work title Science as a Profession by Max Weber . In it he dealt critically with Weber's scientific image of freedom from value judgments . In 1937 he published his main work “The German Character in the History of Europe”, which was by no means adapted to the zeitgeist, which, according to René König, is one of the “most important works” in sociology because of his diagnosis of “authoritarianism”. Thomas Mann wrote about the book: “It is the standard psychology of Germanness, a book that suffers, penetrating and comprehensively depicting knowledge, a book of love basically: a critically broken, fatal love in which the negative and the positive are blurred in painful ambivalence . ”The voluminous work can also be read as a patriotic and spiritual-scientific recourse to“ the other Germany ”- the Germany of poets and thinkers . However, it was already out of date in 1937, which is probably why it was largely forgotten, and a planned second sequel never appeared. In 1943 von Kahler published the cultural-historical work “Man the Measure. A New Approach to History ". It was based on lectures given by von Kahler at the New School for Social Research in 1941 and 1942. In the introduction, Kahler wrote: “This book is an attempt to write history as the biography of man and from it to gain a view of the future of man.” Thomas Mann described the book as “a novel of humanity, told by a musical one Thinkers and historical rhapsodes, (...). "

Fonts (selection)

  • The previous, the present and the future enemy. Weiss, Heidelberg 1914.
  • World face and politics. Weiss, Heidelberg 1916.
  • The Habsburg dynasty. Der Neue Merkur, Munich 1919.
  • The profession of science. Bondi, Berlin 1920.
  • Israel among the peoples. Humanitas-Verlag, Zurich 1936.
  • The German character in the history of Europe. Europa-Verlag, Zurich 1937.
  • Man the Measure. A New Approach to History. Pantheon Books, New York 1943.
  • with Albert Einstein : The Arabs in Palestine. Christian Council on Palestine and American Palestine Committee, 1944.
  • The responsibility of the mind. Collected Essays. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1952.
  • Hermann Broch's philosophy. Mohr (Siebeck), Tübingen 1962.
  • The Orbit of Thomas Mann. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1969.
  • Downfall and transition. Essays. German paperback publishing house, Munich 1970.
  • Judaism and Hatred of Jews: Three Essays. ÖBV-Publikumsverlag, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-215-07706-X .

literature

  • Kahler, Erich von. In: Walther Killy , Rudolf Vierhaus (Hrsg.): Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie. Volume 5, Munich 1997, p. 402. (Reprint: dtv, Munich 2001)
  • Anna Kiel: Erich Kahler, a 'uomo universale' of the twentieth century - his encounters with important contemporaries. From Georgekreis , Max Weber to Hermann Broch and Thomas Mann . Lang, Bern a. a. 1989, ISBN 3-261-03881-0 .
  • Annie Kiel:  Kalhler, Erich von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 25 ( digitized version ).
  • Gerhard Lauer : The belated revolution: Erich von Kahler. History of science between conservative revolution and exile. (= Philosophy and science. Volume 6). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1995, ISBN 3-11-014397-6 .
  • Michael Assmann (Ed.): Thomas Mann , Erich von Kahler. Correspondence 1931–1955. (= Publications of the German Academy for Language and Poetry . 67). Luchterhand, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-630-80012-2 .
  • Thomas Mann: Erich von Kahler. In: Thomas Mann, speeches and essays 2 (= collected works in thirteen volumes. Volume X). Frankfurt am Main 1960, pp. 502-506. (First published in 1945, reprinted in 1990)
  • Inge Jens (Ed.): Thomas Mann. Diaries 1953–1955. Frankfurt am Main 1995.
  • Werner Vordtriede : The topicality of the untimely. Erich v. Kahler on his eightieth birthday (14.X.1965). In: Mercury . 19th year, issue 211, Munich 1965, pp. 1000-1003.
  • Johannes Urzidil : Prague as a spiritual starting point. Ceremonial address on October 21, 1965 on the occasion of Erich von Kahler's 80th birthday. Leo Baeck Institute , New York 1966.
  • Sven Papcke : Society diagnoses . Classical texts of German sociology in the 20th century. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1991, ISBN 3-593-34432-7 , pp. 116-142, Community as a fate. Erich von Kahler on the German special route in Europe.
  • Paul Michael Lützeler (Ed.): Hermann Broch. Letters to Erich von Kahler. 1940-1951. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-022744-4 .
  • Edoardo Massimilla: Views on Weber. Science, life and values ​​in the discussion about "science as a profession". Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2008, Second Chapter, pp. 43–95, On the benefits and disadvantages of the “old” and “new science” for life: Erich von Kahler versus Max Weber.
  • Bastian Schlüter: Exploding antiquity. Imaginations from the Middle Ages between the world wars . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0880-0 , pp. 317–326, The German character in the history of Europe.
  • Hans Rudolf Vaget : Germanism and Judaism. On Erich Kahler's importance for Thomas Mann. In: German quarterly for literary studies and intellectual history. LXXXVI, 2012, pp. 145-164.
  • Dieter Borchmeyer : What is German? A nation's search for itself. Berlin 2017, pp. 189–201, 628–640.
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Eds.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2,1, Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 582.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Mann: Works, Letters, Diaries. Volume 19: Essays VI (1945-1950). Frankfurt am Main 2009, p. 83.
  2. ^ Literature by and about Kahler, Fine from in the catalog of the German National Library
  3. ^ René König: Sociology in Germany. Founder, advocate, despiser. Munich / Vienna 1987, p. 312.
  4. ^ Thomas Mann: Works, Letters, Diaries. Volume 19: Essays VI (1945-1950). Frankfurt am Main 2009, p. 84 f.
  5. ↑ “There were also political reasons for that. With the beginning of the Second World War, the need to get over the brown Leviathan in terms of power politics was superimposed on intellectual sympathy for German Werther. ”So Sven Papcke : Society Diagnoses . Classical texts of German sociology in the 20th century. Frankfurt am Main / New York 1991, therein: Community as doom. Erich von Kahler on the German special route in Europe. Pp. 116–142, here p. 147.
  6. ^ Thomas Mann: Works, Letters, Diaries. Volume 19: Essays VI (1945-1950). Frankfurt am Main 2009, p. 85.
personal data
SURNAME Kahler, Erich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kahler, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cultural philosopher and sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 1970
Place of death Princeton