Robert Klein (philosopher)

Robert Klein (born September 9, 1918 in Timișoara , Romania , † April 1967 in Florence ) was a philosopher and art historian of Romanian origin.

Life

Robert Klein came from a presumably German-speaking Jewish family in Transylvania . He first studied medicine in Cluj from 1936 to 1937, then from 1937 to 1938 philosophy at the German-speaking Karl Ferdinand University in Prague. During the World War he was obliged to do forced labor as a Jew, after the liberation he fought as a volunteer in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. After the end of the war he was able to complete his studies in philosophy at the University of Bucharest in 1947 and then went to Paris on a scholarship. In France he applied for political asylum, whereupon his scholarship and Romanian citizenship were revoked. From then on, Klein lived statelessly in Paris under difficult economic conditions. He worked temporarily as a secretary for the historian and humanism researcher Augustin Renaudet and for the Hispanist Marcel Bataillon . During a research stay in Florence, Robert Klein committed suicide in April 1967.

plant

Robert Klein has been described as one of the great Renaissance researchers of the 20th century (see the foreword by Horst Günther , in: Robert Klein, Gestalt und Gedanke , Wagenbach, Berlin 1996). In his studies, for example, on the theory of the imagination with Marsilio Ficino and Giordano Bruno , on Dante and on the relationship between humanism and science, he set a groundbreaking interdisciplinary approach to work that can otherwise only be found in researchers from the Warburg circle . After his death, Klein's studies were published in an anthology by his colleague André Chastel under the title La forme et intelligible (Paris 1970). A German translation appeared selection in 1996 under the title figure and thought in Wagenbach Verlag Berlin.

Fonts (selection)

• La form et intelligible. Écrits sur la Renaissance et l'art moderne , Gallimard, Paris 1970 (with list of publications and biographical introduction by André Chastel)
• Form and Thought. On the art and theory of the Renaissance . Edited and translated by Horst Günther, Wagenbach Verlag, Berlin 1996. ISBN 3-8031-5153-8
• (together with André Chastel): The world of humanism: Europe 1480–1530 , transl. by Doris Schmidt u. Justus Müller-Hofstede, Callwey, Munich 1963.

Web links

• Article on Robert Klein in the Dictionary of Art Historians