Herman Leo Van Breda

Herman Leo Van Breda (real name Leo Marie Karel ; * February 28, 1911 in Lier ; † March 4, 1974 in Leuven ) was a Franciscan , philosopher and founder of the Husserl Archive in Leuven.

Life

After entering the Franciscan order, Leo Marie Karel received the religious name Hermanus. He was ordained a priest on August 19, 1934 . From 1936 he studied philosophy at the Université catholique de Louvain (today Katholieke Universiteit Leuven ). Because he wanted to do his doctorate with a dissertation on Edmund Husserl , he visited Husserl's widow in Freiburg im Breisgau in the summer of 1938 . During this visit, Van Breda recognized the historical importance of the extensive estate and its endangerment by the National Socialist regime .

Van Breda obtained a declaration as diplomatic luggage from the Belgian embassy in Berlin . The then Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak helped him with this. The declaration protected the content from access by the German authorities on the German-Belgian border. In total, Van Breda brought the following items from the estate to Leuven: 4,700 books from the private library, 10,000 transcribed manuscript pages, all letters and diary entries, 40,000 stenographed pages of lecture texts, records not intended for publication and book manuscripts. In 1939 Van Breda founded the Husserl Archive in Leuven, where he worked until his death. In 1941 he received his doctorate with his work on Husserl's phenomenological reduction. It is thanks to Van Breda that Husserl's estate was saved from being seized by the National Socialists.

Honors

1960: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany

Publications

Cultuurphilosophie. Warny, Leuven 1943
History of the Husserl Archive in Leuven. History of the Husserl Archives Leuven. Together with Thomas Vongehr. Preface Rudolf Bernet. Springer, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-1-402-05726-7 .

literature

Toon Horsten: De pater en de filosoof. De redding van het Husserl-archief , Uitgeverij Vrijdag: Amsterdam, 2018, ISBN 978-94-6001-651-6
Jörgen Vijgen: Herman Leo Van Breda. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 25, Bautz, Nordhausen 2005, ISBN 3-88309-332-7 , Sp. 1405-1407. ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )

Web links

Husserl Archives Leuven (English) / Husserl-Archief: Centrum voor Fenomenologie en Continentale Wijsbegeerte (Dutch).

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b M.OC Döpfner: Kurzschrift des Gedankens. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung No. 254 of October 31, 1990.

personal data
SURNAME	Van Breda, Herman Leo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Karel, Leo Marie (civil)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Belgian Franciscan, philosopher and founder of the Husserl archive in Leuven
DATE OF BIRTH	February 28, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lier (Belgium)
DATE OF DEATH	March 4th 1974
Place of death	Lions

[kurzschrift-1] M.OC Döpfner: Kurzschrift des Gedankens. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung No. 254 of October 31, 1990.