Want fewer ads?

Erich von Kahler (October 14, 1885 – June 28, 1970) was a renowned mid-twentieth-century European-American literary scholar and essayist best known for scholarly works like The Tower and the Abyss: An Inquiry into the Transformation of Man (1957).

Kahler was born in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied philosophy, literature, history, art history, sociology, and psychology at the University of Munich, the University of Berlin, the University of Heidelberg, and the University of Freiberg before earning his doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1911. In 1933 he left Germany, immigrating to the United States in 1938. He became a U.S. citizen in 1944, where he was known as Erich Kahler

In the U.S. he taught at The New School for Social Research, Black Mountain College, Cornell University, and Princeton University. He was a friend of Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and Herman Broch, who wrote Tod der Vergils at Kahler's home in Princeton. Kahler's friends became known as the Kahler-Kreis (Kahler Circle). Like Einstein, Kahler was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. He met and married Alice (Lili) Loewy while in Princeton.

Kahler's many books often take up political themes, in addition to the relation of society to technology and science. He was an ardent Zionist, advocated world government, and was involved in antiwar and anti-nuclear activism.

Kahler died in 1970 at his home in Princeton, survived by his wife, Alice, and a stepdaughter. Alice Loewy Kahler died in 1992.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Erich Kahler", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0