Károly Kerényi (, ; 19 January 1897 – 14 April 1973), also known as Karl Kerényi, Carl Kerényi, Charles Kerényi and Carlo Kerényi (aliases under which his works were sometimes published, respectively in German, English, French and Italian), was a Hungarian scholar in
classical philology and one of the founders of modern studies of
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...
.
Life
Hungary, 1897–1943
Kerényi was born in
Temesvár,
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from 1000 to 1946 and was a key part of the Habsburg monarchy from 1526-1918. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coro ...
,
Austro-Hungarian Empire
Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consist ...
(now Timișoara, Romania), to Hungarian parents of partly German origin. His father's family was of
Swabian peasant descent. His mother was Karolina Halász. Kerényi learnt German as a foreign language at school, and later chose it as his language for scientific work. He identified himself with the city of
Arad, where he attended secondary school, because of its liberal spirits as the city of the
13 martyrs of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848/49. He moved on to study classical philology at the
University of Budapest where he mostly appreciated the teaching of the Latinist Géza Némethy as well as of the Indo-Germanist Josef Schmidt.
After graduation, he travelled extensively in the Mediterranean region and spent time as a visiting student at the Universities of
Greifswald
Greifswald (), officially the University and Hanseatic City of Greifswald (, Low German: ''Griepswoold'') is the fourth-largest city in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania after Rostock, Schwerin and Neubrandenburg. In 2021 it surpa ...
,
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
and
Heidelberg
Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...
, learning from the professors of antiquity and classical philology:
Eduard Norden,
Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and
Franz Boll. In 1919, Kerényi earned his doctorate in Budapest with a dissertation on ''
Plato
Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
and
Longinus, Investigations in Classical Literary and Aesthetic History''.
Subsequently, he taught Greek and Latin in a secondary school. He earned his postdoctoral lecture qualification (
habilitation
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...
) in 1927, and was asked in 1934 to become a professor of classical philology and ancient history ''(Griechische und Lateinische Philologie und Alte Geschichte)'' at the
University of Pécs
The University of Pécs ( , PTE; ) is one of the largest higher education institutions in Hungary. The history of the university began in the Middle Ages, when in 1367, at the request of Louis I of Hungary, King Louis I the Great, Pope Urban V gr ...
. In Budapest, he continued to lecture as
private docent on the history of religions, classical literature and mythology. These were weekly events that were attended by many intellectuals because of their liberal connotations.
After Hungary experienced a
strong move to the political right in 1940, the University system was reformed, submitting itself to political pressure. Professors who did not subordinate themselves were concentrated at the
University of Szeged
The University of Szeged () is a Public university, public research university in Szeged, Hungary. Established as the Jesuit Academy of Kolozsvár in present-day Cluj-Napoca in 1581, the institution was re-established as a university in 1872 by ...
. Correspondingly, Kerényi was sent there in 1941 against his will, to teach
classical antiquity
Classical antiquity, also known as the classical era, classical period, classical age, or simply antiquity, is the period of cultural History of Europe, European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD comprising the inter ...
.
The liberal, pro-western prime minister
Miklós Kállay attempted in 1943 to reverse the Nazi-friendly politics of the prior years. He started to send liberal scientists who had already made themselves a name to Western Europe, to show that a liberal, anti-fascist Hungary also existed. As part of this push, the foreign ministry offered Kerényi the opportunity to spend a year in Switzerland with diplomatic status. He accepted on condition that he would stay in
Ticino
Ticino ( ), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino, is one of the Canton of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eight districts ...
, on the shore of
Lago Maggiore
Lake Maggiore (, ; ; ; ; literally 'greater lake') or Verbano (; ) is a large lake located on the south side of the Alps. It is the List of lakes of Italy, second largest lake in Italy and the List of lakes of Switzerland, largest in southern Sw ...
, instead of the capital Bern.
When the Germans
entered Hungary in 1944 and installed a right-wing government, Kerényi returned his passport. Like many other Hungarians at the time residing in Switzerland with diplomatic status, he thereby became overnight a stateless, political refugee.
Switzerland, 1943–1973
Since 1941, Károly Kerényi was lecturing at the
Eranos-conferences in
Ascona
300px, Ascona
Ascona ( ) is a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.
It is located on the shore of Lake Maggiore.
The town is a popular tourist destination and holds the yearly Ascona Jazz Festival.
...
(Switzerland), to which he had been invited by
Carl Gustav Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. A prolific author of over 20 books, illustrator, and correspondent, Jung was a ...
. This regular contact with the Swiss psychologist had originally established the connection to Switzerland, which ultimately led to the permanent emigration to the Italian-speaking
canton of Ticino. During 1946/47 Kerényi lectured on Hungarian language and literature at the
University of Basel
The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis''; German: ''Universität Basel'') is a public research university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest univ ...
. In 1947, he travelled to Hungary to give his inauguration speech at the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, with the intent of contributing to the democratic development of Hungary. However, due to warnings of the imminent communist overthrow under
Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi (; born Mátyás Rosenfeld; 9 March 1892 – 5 February 1971) was a Hungarian communism, communist politician who was the ''de facto'' leader of Hungary from 1947 to 1956. He served first as General Secretary of the Hungarian ...
, Kerényi immediately left Budapest again. During the following Stalinist dictatorship, he was discredited and banned by the political propaganda under
György Lukács
György Lukács (born Bernát György Löwinger; ; ; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, literary critic, and Aesthetics, aesthetician. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an inter ...
, the leading communist ideologist. His academic title was withdrawn and only as late as 1989 it was reinstated post mortem.
In Switzerland, between 1945 and 1968, the substantial body of his work was written and published. Despite the fact that he was considered an academic outsider, it was during that time that he developed his largest influence as one of the latest representatives of the great tradition of humanistic scholars of antiquity. Over the course of two decades, from 1934 to 1955, Kerényi maintained an active correspondence with the German writer
Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...
on many topics, including mythology, religion, humanism and psychology. Since his emigration, Kerényi additionally held positions as visiting professor at several universities, including
Bonn
Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...
(1955/56),
Oslo
Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...
and
Rome
Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...
(1960),
Zurich
Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...
(1961) and
Genoa
Genoa ( ; ; ) is a city in and the capital of the Italian region of Liguria, and the sixth-largest city in Italy. As of 2025, 563,947 people live within the city's administrative limits. While its metropolitan city has 818,651 inhabitan ...
(1964). Between 1960 and 1971, he held annual lectures at conferences of the institute of philosophy of the
University of Rome. From 1948 until 1966, Kerényi was co-founder and research director at the C. G. Jung Institute in Küsnacht/Zurich, where he held lectures on mythology until 1962. During these years, he lived near the
Monte Verità in Ascona. In 1962, he received Swiss citizenship.
Károly Kerényi died on 14 April 1973 in
Kilchberg/Zurich and he is buried in the cemetery of Ascona. His second wife, Magda Kerényi, dedicated her subsequent life to the maintenance and promotion of Kerényi's legacy. Since her death in 2004, all documentation of Kerényi's life (photos, correspondence, manuscripts, etc.) that had not been destroyed in Budapest during the war, are archived and accessible at the
German Archive for Literature in
Marbach (near Stuttgart). His comprehensive library and the estate of Magda Kerényi are at the University of Pécs, where a street has also been named after him.
Scientific work and philosophical body of thought
Philological foundation
In early years, Károly Kerényi was mainly influenced by philosophers like
Schopenhauer,
Bachofen and
Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche became the youngest pro ...
, writers like
Hölderlin and
Rilke, and scholars like
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt (22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a German philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1949, the university was named aft ...
. At the time of his studies of classical philology,
Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff was the most influential philologist. However, for Kerényi,
Erwin Rohde's line of thought on the fictional literature in antiquity was more important. This led to his first book ''Die griechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur in religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung. Ein Versuch (The Greek-Oriental Romances in the Light of the History of Religions)'', with which he earned his postdoctoral qualification.
Early afterwards, in 1929, Kerényi grew weary of the official scholarly line of philology. He increasingly saw the objective of philology in critically analyzing the written record of antiquity as a representation of real life, just like archeology is dedicated to the record of antiquity through actual touch. The first steps away from the official line were his early books ''Apollon'' (a collection of essays) and ''Die antike Religion (
Religion in Antiquity)''. Throughout his life, Kerényi explored every classical site of the entire Mediterranean. In 1929, he met
Walter F. Otto in Greece for the first time, who would prove to influence him greatly. Otto inspired Kerényi to focus on the religious element of human life in antiquity as the core element, thereby combining the historical with the
theological focus. This is highlighted in his works ''Mythologie der Griechen'' and ''Mysterien der Eleusis (Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter)''.
Dissociation from Wilamowitz and the German idea of ''myth''
Thereafter, Károly Kerényi consciously started to distance himself from the philology taught by Wilamowitz. In Kerényi's understanding, Wilamowitz's approach stood for an
authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and ...
that lay beneath the emergence of
National Socialism
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was frequ ...
in Germany, which he could not ethically support. Kerényi hence developed an increasingly hostile position towards the German idea of myth, which was used as reference by Nazi-Germany. As early as 1934, he expressed his clear-sighted horror at the radicalizing developments in Germany. It became a continuous objective of Kerényi to establish a liberal and human-psychological idea of myth that could not be abused for
nationalistic ideology. This also influenced his position towards several of his scientific mentors.
[Graf F., in Neue Zürcher Zeitung: ''Philologe, Mythologe, Humanist – Vor hundert Jahren wurde Karl Kerényi geboren'', 18/19 January 1997] With regards to Wilamowitz, this was most pronounced, but later, Kerényi also started to distance himself from those aspects in Otto's and Mann's understanding of myth that he saw reflected in German nationalism.
Psychological expansion of mythology
Károly Kerényi's scientific interpretation of the figures of Greek mythology as archetypes of the human soul was in line with the approach of the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. Together with Jung, he endeavored to establish mythology as a science in its own right.
Jung described Kerényi as having "supplied such a wealth of connections
f psychologywith Greek mythology that the cross-fertilization of the two branches of science can no longer be doubted."
Kerényi compiled in collaboration with Jung the two editions ''Das göttliche Kind in mythologischer und psychologischer Beleuchtung (The Myths of the Divine Child)'' and ''Das göttliche Mädchen (The Divine Maiden)'', which were published together under the title ''Einführung in das Wesen der Mythologie (Essays on a Science of Mythology)'' in 1941.
Kerényi saw the theory of religion as a human and humanistic topic which coined his reputation as
humanist
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...
further. For him, every view of mythology had to be a view of man—and hence ''theology'' always had to be at the same time, ''anthropology''. In this humanist spirit, Kerényi defined himself as ''philological-historical'' ''as well as'' ''psychological scholar''. In later years, Kerényi evolved his psychological interpretation further and replaced the concept of archetypes with one that he labeled ''Urbild''. This became particularly clear in some of his most important publications: ''
Prometheus
In Greek mythology, Prometheus (; , , possibly meaning "forethought")Smith"Prometheus". is a Titans, Titan. He is best known for defying the Olympian gods by taking theft of fire, fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technol ...
,'' as well as in ''
Dionysos'', likely Kerényi's most crucial work, which he had started as an idea in 1931 and finished writing in 1969. Kerényi hence looked at the appearances in Greek religion not as curiosities, but as expressions of real human experience. As a historian of myth as it was embedded in the details of Hellenic culture, its "characteristic social existence" as he put it, Kerényi opposed his "differentiated thinking about the concrete realities of human life" with the "summary thinking" that represented for him the influence of Sir
James Frazer on the study of the peoples of
antiquity and
Greek religion especially.
Kerényi as cultural anthropologist
Not least as a result of his own personal experience, Károly Kerényi highlighted the role of the philologist as ''interpreter'', whereby "the better he interprets, the more he becomes himself the subject, both as receiver as well as messenger. His whole essence and being, his structure and his own experiences, become a factor that cannot be overlooked for interpretation.” In this sense, Kerényi's understanding of science was very modern in 1944. In a time when human sciences were trying to establish themselves as objective-scientific, he recognized that the only means by which to achieve scientific objectivity was by disclosing each scholar's own individual subjectivity.
Kerényi also anticipated a paradigm shift of the late 20th century, by subscribing to an interdisciplinary approach that combined the subjects of human sciences including literature, art, history, philosophy and religion. The inclusion of fictional writing into his studies of mythology and humanism is also documented by the publications of his correspondence with Thomas Mann and
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a Germans, German-Swiss people, Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophic ...
. Kerényi published a further series of thoughts on European humanism in 1955 with the title ''Geistiger Weg Europas (Europe's Intellectual Journey)''. Among the numerous personalities with whom Kerényi maintained important personal and scholarly interaction were the Hungarian poets
László Németh,
Antal Szerb and Pál Gulyás, the psychologist
Léopold Szondi, the writer Otto Heuschele and the historian
Carl Jacob Burckhardt. Thanks to his essay-style, Kerényi managed to speak a language that was easily understandable, but it also meant he remained relatively isolated in academic philology.
In Hungary, Károly Kerényi's scientific achievements remained during his lifetime only known to a small circle of intellectuals. Of all his publications, only few have been published in Hungarian. As a prominent member of the former Hungarian intellectual establishment and the bearer of an aristocratic name, he was banished from Hungarian cultural life since the 1940s for being too liberal, first by the right-wing pro-Nazi governments, and later by the communist regime. Even though Kerényi was fiercely defended by famous Hungarian writers like Laszlo Németh and
Antal Szerb, it took until the 1980s before his complete moral and scholarly rehabilitation took place.
[Monostori, I . in Schlesier, R. and R. Sanchiño Martinez (eds.): ''Neuhumanismus und Anthropologie des Griechischen Mythos – Karl Kerényi im Europäischen Kontext des 20. Jahrhunderts'', 2006; pp. 161] The Hungarian writer
Antal Szerb has modeled some features of Károly Kerényi into the figure Rudi Waldheim in his novel ''
Journey by Moonlight''.
Honors and awards
* 1929: Scholarship at the German Archeological Institute in Athens
* 1931: Medal of Honor of
George I of Greece
George I ( Greek: Γεώργιος Α΄, romanized: ''Geórgios I''; 24 December 1845 – 18 March 1913) was King of Greece from 30 March 1863 until his assassination on 18 March 1913.
Originally a Danish prince, George was born in Copenhage ...
* 1946:
Baumgarten Prize
* 1947: Fellowship of the
Bollingen Foundation
The Bollingen Foundation was an educational foundation set up along the lines of a university press in 1945. It was named after Bollingen Tower, Carl Jung's country home in Bollingen, Switzerland. Funding was provided by Paul Mellon and his ...
(maintained until 1973)
* 1961: Member of the
Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters
The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters (, DKNVS) is a Norway, Norwegian learned society based in Trondheim. It was founded in 1760 and is Norway's oldest scientific and scholarly institution. The society's Protector is King Harald V of ...
* 1963: Honorary doctorate of the Theological Faculty of the
University of Uppsala
Uppsala University (UU) () is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation.
Initially founded in the 15th century, the university rose to s ...
* 1969: Gold medal of the Humboldt Society
* 1970:
Pirckheimer-Ring of the City of
Nuremberg
Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...
* 1989: Post mortem: Member of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
* 1990:
Széchenyi Prize of the Hungarian Government
Works and publications
First editions:
* ''Apollon. Studien über antike Religion und Humanität (Apollo: The Wind, the Spirit, and the God)'' (1937)
* ''Das ägäische Fest. Die Meergötterszene in Goethes Faust II'' (1941)
* ''Der Mythos der Hellenen in Meisterwerken der Münzkunst'' (1941)
* ''Einführung in das Wesen der Mythologie'' (C. G. Jung/Károly Kerényi) (1942)
* ''Pseudo-Antisthenés, beszélgetések a szerelemről'' (1943)
* ''Hermes, der Seelenführer (Hermes: Guide of Souls)'' (1943)
* ''Mysterien der Kabiren'' (1944)
* ''Töchter der Sonne, Betrachtungen über griechische Gottheiten (Goddesses of Sun and Moon)'' (1944)
* ''Bachofen und die Zukunft des Humanismus. Mit einem Intermezzo über Nietzsche und Ariadne'' (1945)
* ''Die Geburt der Helena samt humanistischen Schriften aus den Jahren 1943–45'' (1945)
* ''Prometheus. Das griechische Mythologem von der menschlichen Existenz (Prometheus: Archetypal Image of Human Existence)'' (1946)
* ''Der Göttliche Arzt. Studien über Asklepius und seine Kultstätte (Asklepios: Archetypal Image of the Physician's Existence)'' (1948)
* ''Niobe. Neue Studien über Antike Religion und Humanität'' (1949)
* ''Mensch und Maske'' (1949)
* ''Pythagoras und Orpheus. Präludien zu einer zukünftigen Geschichte der Orphik und des Pythagoreismus'' (1950)
* ''Labyrinth-Studien'' (1950)
* ''Die Mythologie der Griechen (The Mythology of the Greeks)''
** Volume 1: ''Die Götter- und Menschheitsgeschichten (Gods of the Greeks)'' (1951)
** Volume 2: ''Die Heroen der Griechen (The Heroes of the Greeks)''
ater also published as ''Heroengeschichten'' or ''Heroen-Geschichten''(1958)
* ''Die Jungfrau und Mutter der griechischen Religion. Eine Studie über Pallas Athene (Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion)'' (1952)
* ''Stunden in Griechenland, Horai Hellenikai'' (1952)
* ''Unwillkürliche Kunstreisen. Fahrten im alten Europa 1952'' (1954)
* ''Geistiger Weg Europas: Fünf Vorträge über Freud, Jung, Heidegger, Thomas Mann, Hofmannsthal, Rilke, Homer und Hölderlin'', Zürich (1955)
* ''Umgang mit Göttlichem'' (1955)
* ''Griechische Miniaturen'' (1957)
* ''Gespräch in Briefen (Mythology and Humanism: The Correspondence of Thomas Mann and Karl Kerényi)'' (Thomas Mann/Károly Kerényi) (1960)
* ''Streifzüge eines Hellenisten, Von Homer zu Kazantzakis'' (1960)
* ''Der frühe Dionysos'' (1961)
* ''Prometheus – Die menschliche Existenz in griechischer Deutung'' (1962)
* ''Die Mysterien von Eleusis (Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter)'' (1962)
* ''Tessiner Schreibtisch'' (1963)
* ''Die Religion der Griechen und Römer (The Religion of the Greeks and Romans)'' (1963)
* ''Die Eröffnung des Zugangs zum Mythos'' (1967)
* ''Der antike Roman'' (1971)
* ''Briefwechsel aus der Nähe'' (Hermann Hesse/Károly Kerényi) (1972)
* ''Zeus und Hera. Urbild des Vaters, des Gatten und der Frau (Zeus and Hera: Archetypal Image of Father, Husband and Wife)'' (1972)
* ''Oedipus Variations: Studies in Literature and Psychoanalysis'' (James Hillman/Károly Kerényi) (1991)
''Complete Works'':
* ''Complete Works in Individual Volumes'', Magda Kerényi (ed.). Eight parts in nine volumes. Langen-Müller, Munich 1966–1988
** Volume 1: ''Humanistische Seelenforschung'' (1966)
** Volume 2: ''Auf Spuren des Mythos'' (1967)
** Volume 3: ''Tage- und Wanderbücher'' 1953–1960 (1969)
** Volume 4: ''Apollon und Niobe'' (1980)
** Volume 5: ''Wege und Weggenossen'' (2 Bde., 1985 u. 1988)
** Volume 6: (not published)
** Volume 7: ''Antike Religion'' (1971)
** Volume 8: ''Dionysos : Urbild des unzerstörbaren Lebens'' (1976)
* ''Complete Works in Individual Volumes'', Magda Kerényi (ed.). Five volumes. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1994–1998
** Volume 1: ''Dionysos : Urbild des unzerstörbaren Lebens'' (1994)
** Volume 2: ''Antike Religion'' (1995)
** Volume 3: ''Humanistische Seelenforschung'' (1996)
** Volume 4: ''Die Mythologie der Griechen'' (Two volumes, 1997)
** Volume 5: ''Urbilder der griechischen Religion: Asklepios. Prometheus. Hermes. Und die Mysterien der Kabiren'' (1998)
References and sources
;References
;Sources
* Magda Kerényi: ''A Bibliography of C. Kerényi'', in ''Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life''. Bollingen Series LXV:2, Princeton 1976, pp. 445–474
* Giuseppe Martorana (ed.), Károly Kerényi: ''La storia delle religioni nella cultura del Novecento'', ''
Mythos
Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...
'' 7, 1995
* Luciano Arcella (ed.), Károly Kerényi: ''Incontro con il divino'', Roma 1999
* János Gy. Szilágyi (ed.): ''Mitológia és humanitás. Tanulmányok Kerényi Károly 100''. születésnapjára, Budapest 1999
* Renate Schlesier and Roberto Sanchiño Martinez (eds.): ''Neuhumanismus und Anthropologie des griechischen Mythos. Karl Kerényi im europäischen Kontext des 20. Jahrhunderts (Modern Humanism and Anthropology of the Greek Mythology – Károly Kerényi in the European Context of the 20th Century)''. (Locarno 2006),
External links
Klett Cotta PublicationsThames and Hudson PublishersNeue Zürcher Zeitung/NZZ Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kerenyi, Karl
Academic staff of the University of Pécs
Hungarian people of German descent
Danube-Swabian people
Classical philologists
Mythographers
Writers from Timișoara
1897 births
1973 deaths
Scholars of Greek mythology and religion
Baumgarten Prize winners