Helmut Kohlenberger (born 1942 in Vítkov) is a German philosopher, translator, editor and university lecturer at both the Universities of Vienna and

Salzburg Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian) is the List of cities and towns in Austria, fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872. The town is on the site of the ...

. He is the author of several works, including ''The European Idea and Culture'', ''Theoretical issues of the Middle Ages'' and ''Modernism''.World Association of International Studies - Profile of Helmut Kohlenberger
''waisworld.org.'' Retrieved 2024-01-18

Biography

Kohlenberger was born in Wigstadtl in

Reichsgau Sudetenland The Reichsgau Sudetenland was an administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1939 to 1945. It comprised the northern part of the ''Sudetenland'' territory, which was annexed from Czechoslovakia according to the 30 September 1938 Munich Agreement. ...

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

(now Vítkov in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

) in 1942 but was schooled in postwar

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

. He studied the history of philosophy in the German 19th-century tradition,

Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemolo ...

and

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...

, at the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Wü ...

. He also worked with Friedrich Tenbruck on sociological questions in the

Max Weber Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profo ...

tradition. Kohlenberger continued Medieval studies at the

University of Bochum The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began in ...

and then worked in the field of

medieval philosophy Medieval philosophy is the philosophy that existed through the Middle Ages, the period roughly extending from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century until after the Renaissance in the 13th and 14th centuries. Medieval philosophy, ...

, the development of universities and the collapse of the Christian values in modern society. He joined

Raymond Klibansky Raymond Klibansky, (October 15, 1905 – August 5, 2005) was a German-Canadian historian of philosophy and art. Biography Born in Paris, to Rosa Scheidt and Hermann Klibansky, he was educated at the University of Kiel, University of Hamburg ...

on the Oxford committee for Medieval studies and spent thirty years working on the

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

sponsored ''International Bibliography of Philosophy''. He was associated with

Jan Patočka Jan Patočka (; 1 June 1907 – 13 March 1977) was a Czech philosopher. Having studied in Prague, Paris, Berlin, and Freiburg, he was one of the last pupils of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In Freiburg he also developed a lifelong philos ...

and the

Charta 77 Charter 77 (''Charta 77'' in Czech and Slovak) was an informal civic initiative in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Jiří Něm ...

movement in Prague in the 1960s and '70s. He was an employee of the magazine ''Tumult'' which covered Transport Economics of Vienna & Munich. He taught the

History of Ideas Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual histor ...

at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

in 1973–1987, plus working for Austrian Radio. Since the late 1980s he has taught at the

University of Salzburg The University of Salzburg (german: Universität Salzburg), also known as the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (''Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg'', PLUS), is an Austrian public university A public university or public college is a univ ...

plus lecturing abroad, translating and participating on editorial boards. He translated texts by

André Glucksmann André Glucksmann (; 19 June 1937 – 10 November 2015) was a French philosopher, activist and writer. He was a leading figure of the new philosophers. Glucksmann began his career as a Marxist, but went on to reject communism in the popular bo ...

from French into German, and was an editor of the magazine ''Stredni Europe'' (''Central Europe'').

Publications

* ''Similitudo und Ratio'' (1972) * ''Die Wahrheit des Ganzen'' (1976) * ''Von der Notwendigkeit der Philosophie in der Gegenwart: Festschrift für Karl Ulmer zum 60.''(1976) * ''Cuando el jego va en serio'' (1991) * ''Gesellschaftstheorien in Österreich'' (with R. Knoll, 1994) * ''Briefe über Deutschland'' (1996) * ''25 Years (1969–1994) of Anselm Studies'' (Editor, 1996) * Reason, Action, and Experience: Essays in Honor of Raymond Klibansky, (Editor, 1998) * ''Von der Romantik zur ästhetischen Religion'' (Contributor, 2004) * ''Rechtsphilosophie: Vom Grundlagenfach zur Transdisziplinarität in den Rechts-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften. '' (Contributor 2010) * ''How the West was Won: Essays on the Literary Imagination, the Canon,'' (Contributor, The Monastic Challenge, 2010) * ''Prozeß, Spiel: Fragmente zum 2. Jahrtausend'' (with Willi Donner, 2013)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kohlenberger, Helmut 1942 births Living people People from Vítkov People from Sudetenland Sudeten German people German essayists German philosophers 20th-century German writers 21st-century German writers 21st-century German male writers 20th-century essayists 21st-century essayists 20th-century German male writers University of Tübingen alumni German male non-fiction writers