Pacifist educationist driven into exile for indicting German militarism's war guilt
German philosopher, educationist and pacifist, born in Berlin in 1869, a son of the astronomer Wilhelm Julius Foerster. He taught in Zurich from 1898 and became a full professor at Munich in 1914. During the First World War he attacked the militarism and war guilt of Germany's ruling circles and was repeatedly assailed by nationalists; in 1918 he went to Bern as envoy of Kurt Eisner's Free State of Bavaria. After My Struggle against Militaristic and Nationalistic Germany (1920) brought death threats, he gave up his chair in 1922 and fled to Switzerland, settling in France in 1926. In the 1933 book burnings his writings went into the fire with the slogan "Against immoral opportunism and political betrayal", and he was on the first Nazi list of those stripped of citizenship. Hunted by the Gestapo in 1940, he escaped to the United States, and spent his last years in Switzerland.
Activities and affiliations
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1914–1922
Germany state institutionsMain
Education
Career Timeline
- 1893Doctorate on Kant's ethics
- 1898–1912Privatdozent at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich
- 1913–1914Extraordinary professor at the University of Vienna
- 1914–1922Professor of pedagogy and philosophy at Munich
- 1918Envoy of the Free State of Bavaria in Bern
- 1920My Struggle against Militaristic and Nationalistic Germany
- 1922Resigned his chair and fled to Switzerland
- 1926Settled in France
- 1933.05.10Writings burned in the book burnings
- 1933.08.23On the first Nazi expatriation list
- 1937Europe and the German Question
- 1940Fled via Portugal to the United States
- 1953Memoirs, Erlebte Weltgeschichte
- 1963Returned to Switzerland