Ernst Kantorowicz : : A Life / / Robert Lerner.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Lerner, Robert,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (424 p.) :; 25 halftones.

This is the first complete biography of Ernst Kantorowicz (1895-1963), an influential and controversial German-American intellectual whose colorful and dramatic life intersected with many of the great events and thinkers of his time. A medieval historian whose ideas exerted an influence far beyond his field, he is most famous for two books-a notoriously nationalistic 1927 biography of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and The King's Two Bodies (1957), a classic study of medieval politics.Born into a wealthy Prussian-Jewish family, Kantorowicz fought on the Western Front in World War I, was wounded at Verdun, and earned an Iron Cross; later, he earned an Iron Crescent for service in Anatolia before an affair with a general's mistress led to Kantorowicz being sent home. After the war, he fought against Poles in his native Posen, Spartacists in Berlin, and communists in Munich. An ardent German nationalist during the Weimar period, Kantorowicz became a member of the elitist Stefan George circle, which nurtured a cult of the "Secret Germany." Yet as a professor in Frankfurt after the Nazis came to power, Kantorowicz bravely spoke out against the regime before an overflowing crowd. Narrowly avoiding arrest after Kristallnacht, he fled to England and then the United States, where he joined the faculty at Berkeley, only to be fired in 1950 for refusing to sign an anticommunist "loyalty oath." From there, he "fell up the ladder" to Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, where he stayed until his death.Drawing on many new sources, including numerous interviews and unpublished letters, Robert E. Lerner tells the story of a major intellectual whose life and times were as fascinating as his work.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Old Posen and Young Ernst -- Chapter 2. "With Rifle and Gun" -- Chapter 3. Fine Fever -- Chapter 4. Heidelberg -- Chapter 5. St. George -- Chapter 6. The Castle Hill -- Chapter 7. Frederick II -- Chapter 8. Center of Attention -- Chapter 9. Becoming a Professional -- Chapter 10. Frankfurt -- Chapter 11. Year of Drama -- Chapter 12. Oxford -- Chapter 13. "Leisure with Dignity" -- Chapter 14. Flight -- Chapter 15. "Displaced Foreign Scholar" -- Chapter 16. "Without Any Desire for Europe" -- Chapter 17. Laudes Regiae -- Chapter 18. Fight for Employment -- Chapter 19. "Hyperborean Fields" -- Chapter 20. "Scarcely Wants to Go to Germany" -- Chapter 21. "Land of Lotus-Eaters" -- Chapter 22. The Fundamental Issue -- Chapter 23. Advanced Study -- Chapter 24. The King's Two Bodies -- Chapter 25. "EKa Is Sick of EKa" -- Chapter 26. Last Years -- Afterword -- Index