Kurt Singer (economist)

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Kurt Singer (born May 18, 1886 in Magdeburg ; died February 10, 1962 in Athens ) was a German philosopher and economist.

Due to his visiting professorship in Tokyo and the subsequent ban on returning to Germany , Singer spent several years in imperial Japan. There he made extensive observations on the Japanese being, which he processed in what is probably his most important work, the study of mirrors, swords and precious stones .

Life

Career until 1931

Kurt Singer was born on May 18, 1886 in Magdeburg as the son of a German-Jewish father and an English mother . After school, which he spent in Hamburg , he studied from 1904 to 1910 at the universities of Berlin , Freiburg , Geneva and Strasbourg a wide range of subjects: philosophy, sociology, literature, art history and economics . Although he opted for the latter professionally, Singer, whom the historian Richard Storry later referred to as "an economist with the soul of a poet", should never lose his passion for poetry and the humanities.

From 1912 Singer worked in Hamburg. On the recommendation of Georg Friedrich Knapp , from whom Singer received his doctorate with a dissertation on the Indian monetary reform. he became private secretary of Friedrich Bendixens , the director of the Hamburger Hypothekenbank. He then worked as a business journalist, among other things, published articles in the Hamburg Correspondeten and in the Wirtschaftsdienst , co-founded by Max Warburg , where Singer also worked for several years as chief editor. At the same time, he devoted himself to academic teaching and completed his habilitation in 1920, one year after its opening, at the University of Hamburg . In 1924, Singer received the title of non-official, associate professor.

Singer's book Plato der Gründer , a reinterpretation of Plato in the spirit of Stefan George , on which he worked during his economics professorship and which was published in Munich in 1927, is indicative of his versatility and mental agility .

Stay and teaching in Japan

In 1931, Singer accepted an invitation to teach at the Imperial University of Tokyo for four years . Thereupon he left Hamburg in the spring of the same year and, apart from a brief stay after the Second World War , was never to return to Germany.

After a month of shipping, he arrived in Tokyo . The beginnings were more difficult than expected for Singer, however, and he felt deeply alienated by the new living environment. Instead of traditional Japan, which Singer had been fascinated by since his youth, he came across a seemingly westernized and progress-driven country with lost customs. Before the lively connection with prehistoric times and history became tangible and the pure lines of the Japanese lifestyle became visible, Singer wrote in retrospect, it took several months of searching, questioning and wandering. In addition, Japan in the early 1930s found itself in an uneasy and tense political situation in which, like in its own country, militarism, terror and blind patriotism spread almost unhindered. The expansionist efforts of Singer's host country culminated in the Mukden incident and the occupation of Manchuria by Japanese troops in 1931 , before culminating in the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II .

Singer made Japan the subject of his contemplation during and after his stay in Asia: he worked on his comprehensive study Mirror, Sword and Gemstone and in 1939 published the anthology The Life of Ancient Japan , a volume of sources that was created parallel to this work.

After a few years of teaching, the National Socialist policy of persecution of the Jews in Germany began to have an impact on the allied Japan: Singer, who was now refused to return to Germany for racial reasons, had to come to terms with the imperial university prohibiting his further participation. He only remained in office until his contract expired in spring 1935. It was not until the following year - Singer was touring China for a few months - that he found another job, as a German teacher at a grammar school in Sendai . To his regret, however, the language lessons offered only limited opportunities to bring his high academic qualifications to bear.

Spiegel, Schwert und Edelstein would only appear in German more than 20 years after Singer's death. Cover of the first German edition.

Singer also lost this position at the end of the thirties under the pretext of insufficient pedagogical aptitude and was finally forced to leave Japan after spending more than eight years there.

Exile and return to Europe

In 1939 Kurt Singer emigrated to Australia , where he was initially interned as an enemy foreigner for two years - the Second World War had just broken out . After he was recognized as a Jewish emigrant, he received a research grant and wrote the controversial study The Idea of ​​Conflict , which appeared in Melbourne in 1949 . At the age of sixty, he re-entered academic life and took a teaching position at the University of New South Wales in Sydney until he retired from university.

In the fall of 1957, Singer left Australia and returned to Europe after an absence of more than twenty-five years. However, he did not stay long in Germany, where the celibate man had no close relatives apart from his younger sister. He obtained his retirement from the Hamburg Senate and settled in Greece after temporary stays in Switzerland and Italy. He traveled the country and devoted himself to various studies until he died on February 10, 1962 in Athens , his last residence.

Mirror, sword and gem

Singer's mirror, sword and gemstone , named after the Japanese throne insignia , occupy a special place in his oeuvre. The versatile educated thinker writes in it, from a psychological, sociological and cultural-historical point of view, about Japanese peculiarities.

The study is based on observations that Singer made during his several years in Japan and his trip to China in 1935. Originally conceived in German, Singer was later to write it down or finish it in English while in exile in Australia. In Australia he also worked towards the end of the war on essential parts of the book, which was now titled Mirror, Sword and Jewel .

Immediately after the Second World War , Singer sent the manuscript to various European and American publishers who, however, refused to publish it due to a lack of paper or the meanwhile changed view of Japan. It wasn't until 1973, years after Singer's death, that the book appeared in London . The German translation, which was first published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 1991 , is based on the full English-language text that Singer completed in Sydney , but also includes partial drafts and fragments of the lost German manuscript that have been preserved.

Works

  • The money as a symbol , Jena 1920.
  • State and economy since the armistice , Jena 1924.
  • Plato the Founder , Munich 1927.
  • The Life of Ancient Japan , Tokyo 1939 (not published in German).
  • The Idea of ​​Conflict , Melbourne 1949 (not published in German).
  • Mirror, sword and gem. Structures of Japanese Life , Frankfurt a. M. 1991.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ W. Schwentker : Max Weber in Japan. An investigation into the history of the impact 1905-1995 , Mohr Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen 1998, p. 109.
  2. ↑ a b From the foreword to Spiegel, Schwert und Edelstein , edited and translated from English by Wolfgang Wilhelm, Frankfurt a. M. 1991, p. 9.
  3. ^ M. Landmann: Figures around Stefan George. Ten portraits . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1988, p. 63 f.
  4. ↑ K. Singer: Report on the Japanese years . In: Robert Boehringer - A gift from friends, Mohr Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen 1957, p. 591 f.
  5. ↑ From the foreword to Spiegel, Schwert und Edelstein , edited and translated from English by Wolfgang Wilhelm, Frankfurt a. M. 1991, p. 16.
  6. ↑ a b From the foreword to Spiegel, Schwert und Edelstein , edited and translated from English by Wolfgang Wilhelm, Frankfurt a. M. 1991, p. 21.
personal data
SURNAME Singer, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher and economist
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1962
Place of death Athens