Erich Kahler

Erich von Kahler (1885-1970) was a Czech-born literary scholar, essayist, and historian who emigrated from Nazi Germany to the United States in 1938, where he taught at institutions including Cornell and Princeton Universities and became known for his profound analyses of history, culture, and human transformation. Leo Baeck Institute. His most notable works include Man the Measure (1943), a new approach to history; The Tower and the Abyss (1957), an inquiry into modern man's transformation praised by T.S. Eliot; and The Jews Among the Nations (1967), which earned an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. A friend of Einstein and Thomas Mann, he contributed significantly to understanding German character, Jewish identity, and the disintegration of form in arts and narrative.