Ernst Kantorowicz

The first complete biography of an influential historian whose dramatic life intersected with many great events and thinkers of the twentieth centuryThis is the first complete biography of Ernst Kantorowicz (1895–1963), an influential German-American medieval historian whose colorful life intersected with many of the great events and thinkers of his time. Born into a wealthy Prussian-Jewish family, he fought in World War I—earning an Iron Cross and an Iron Crescent—before being sent home following an affair with a general’s mistress. Though he was an ardent German nationalist during the Weimar period, after the Nazis came to power he bravely spoke out against the regime before an overflowing crowd in Frankfurt. He narrowly avoided arrest after Kristallnacht, fleeing to England and then the United States, where he joined the faculty at Berkeley, only to be fired in 1950 for refusing to sign an anticommunist “loyalty oath.” From there, he “fell up the ladder” to Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, where he wrote his masterwork, The King’s Two Bodies.Drawing on many new sources, including numerous interviews and unpublished letters, Robert E. Lerner tells the story of a major intellectual whose life and times were as fascinating as his work.

“A richly illuminating study … [and] a timely meditation on the vicissitudes of abstract, purist ideals under the pressure of savage real-world events.”—George Prochnik, New York Times Book Review, “A thorough and fascinating chronicle.”—Brendan Simms, Wall Street Journal, “[A] finely grained portrait.”—Robert E. Norton, Times Literary Supplement, “[Robert Lerner] sets Kantorowicz in the context of his time, uniting heroic archival research, including numerous interviews with Kantorowicz's associates and friends, with discerning judgments to trace his remarkable odyssey. The result is a valuable contribution to modern European and American intellectual history.”—Jacob Heilbrunn, National Interest, “Lerner’s biography is worthy of great praise, and it is very unlikely that it will ever be superseded.”—Walter Laqueur, Jewish Review of Books

Robert E. Lerner is professor emeritus of history at Northwestern University, where he taught medieval history for more than forty years.