Oswald Spengler

Bio

From Encyclopedia.com :

"Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), German universal historian, was born in Blankenburg, in the Harz mountains. Of Protestant parentage, he was descended on his father’s side from a line of mining engineers; his mother’s family was artistically inclined. Both inheritances came together in Spengler—in his scientific interests on the one hand and his stylistic ability and talent for bold, intuitive theoretical formulations on the other.

After attending a humanist Gymnasium in Halle, he studied mathematics and the natural sciences at the universities of Munich, Berlin, and Halle. He obtained his doctor’s degree at Halle with a dissertation on Heraclitus. Spengler’s preoccupation with this pre-Socratic Greek philosopher foreshadowed some of the main ideas of his major work: he was to translate “everything flows” into historical relativism and “war, the father of all things” into a self-consciously tough, “heroic” world view. Spengler was a lone wolf—a bachelor, and also an outsider to the German world of learning. Having taught at a number of schools, the last a Hamburg Realgymnasium, he moved to Munich as a private scholar in 1911, at which time he conceived the idea for the work which was to stir up the entire historical profession."

(https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/historians-european-biographies/oswald-spengler)

Publications

WORKS BY SPENGLER:

(1918-1922) 1926-1928 The Decline of the West. 2 vols. Authorized translation with notes by Charles F. Atkinson. New York: Knopf. → Volume 1: Form and Actuality. Volume 2: Perspectives of World History. First published as Der Untergang des Abendlandes.

(1920) 1942 Preussentum und Sozialismus. Munich: Beck. → Reprinted in Spengler (1933a).

1924 Der Neubau des Deutschen Reiches. Munich: Beck. → Reprinted in Spengler (1933a).

(1931) 1932 Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life. New York: Knopf. → First published as Der Mensch und die Technik: Beitrag zu einer Philosophic des Lebens.

1933a Politische Schriften. Munich: Beck.

(1933b) 1934 The Hour of Decision. New York: Knopf. → First published as Jahre der Entscheidung.

Reden und Aufsdtze. 3d ed. Munich: Beck, 1951. → Published posthumously. Contains Heraklit and other writings first published between 1904 and 1936.

Letters, 1913-1936. Translated and edited by Arthur Helps. New York: Knopf, 1966. → First published in German.