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Werner Jaeger (30 July 1888
- 9 October 1961) was one of the leading
classicists of the 20th century.
He was born in Lobberich, Germany, went to school there and at the Gymnasium Thomaeum in Kempen, and studied at the universities of Marburg and Berlin, from where he received his Ph.D. in 1911 with an instantly famous dissertation on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Based on that, he was called, just 26
years old and without Habilitation, to a professorship with chair at the University of
Basel, Switzerland, one year later in the same position to Kiel, and in 1921 to Berlin, then still one of the world's leading institutions, if not
the leading one, especially in a field like classics. Jaeger stayed in Berlin until 1936, when he emigrated because of the
Nazis. Jaeger was one of the very few German scholars who left Germany during the Third Reich without having
to - he was neither a Jew nor a Communist or
otherwise on the persecution list, but rather a bourgeois humanist in the very best sense. Thanks to his international fame, and contrary to many of
his colleages he readily found employment in the USA, first as a full professor at the
University of Chicago (1936-1939), then from 1939 to at
Harvard University, where he remained. Jaeger died in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Works
- Aristoteles (1924)
- Platons Stellung im Aufbau der griechischen Bildung (1928)
- Paideia, 3 vols. (from 1934), his magnum opus on Greek thought
and education from Homer to Demosthenes
See Also
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