Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973) was a social philosopher, who taught at Dartmouth College from 1935 to 1957. He was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of a Jewish banker.

Related Topics:
1888 - 1973 - Dartmouth College - 1935 - 1957 - Berlin, Germany - Jewish

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At 16 years old, he converted to Christianity, and remained a devout Christian for the rest of his life. He taught law at Leipzig University from 1912 to 1914. In 1914, he married Margrit Huessy, and according to Swiss custom, added her surname to his own. He may be best known as the close friend and correspondent of Franz Rosenzweig. Their exchange of letters is considered by social scholars to be indispensable in the study of the modern encounter of Jews with Christianity. He was a German army officer during World War I, serving at the front, near Verdun. His experience during the war had a profound impact on him and was a decisive influence on much of his later work.

Related Topics:
Christianity - 1914 - Franz Rosenzweig - Jew - World War I - Verdun

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After the war, he did not return to the university, and instead went to work for Daimler-Benz at the Stuttgart automobile assembly plant. He became the first editor of the factory magazine, which he founded in 1919; and he served as its editor until 1921. He founded, and for a year served as the director, of an adult education program in Frankfurt, called The Academy of Labor. In 1923, he became a professor of law at the University of Breslau, and there published Angewandte Seelenkunde ("An Applied Science of the Soul"), which proposed a method based upon language and speech, for the study of social sciences. He spent the remainder of his career elaborating on this grammatical method, dubbed metanomics.

Related Topics:
1919 - 1921 - Adult education - University of Breslau - Social science - Metanomics

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In 1933 he fled to the United States to escape national socialism. There, he taught first at Harvard University and then, from 1935 until retirement in 1957, he was at Dartmouth. While at Dartmouth College, in 1940 he presented a request to US President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and was granted approval to organize a youth training program for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Camp William James was founded as a prototype for a national peacetime volunteer labor service, in Vermont, which in conception anticipated the Peace Corps by more than two decades, but was broken off together with all other CCC programs, in 1941, by the entrance of the United States into World War II.

Related Topics:
1933 - National socialism - Harvard University - 1935 - 1957 - 1940 - US President - Franklin Delano Roosevelt - Civilian Conservation Corps - Camp William James - Vermont - Peace Corps - 1941 - World War II

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