Eric Voegelin Autobiographical Lecture: Escaping the Nazis and French Intellectual Culture

Eric Voegelin describes the political environment that made possible the Nazi occupation of Austria (Anshluss) in 1938 and his subsequent escape from the Gestapo into Switzerland and the difficulties people had in understanding his motives for leaving Austria. The topic then changes to the year he spent in Paris which enabled him to study French literature, poetry, memoires, law and philosophy. He has something to say about Gustav Flaubert, Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry, le Duc de la Rochefoucault and Henri Bergson. And along the way he learned Russian in Paris from White Russian émigrés.

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Eric Voegelin (1901-85) was a German-born American Political Philosopher. He was born in Cologne and educated in Political Science at the University of Vienna, at which he became Associate Professor of Political Science. In 1938 he and his wife fled from the Nazi forces which had entered Vienna and emigrated to the United States, where they became citizens in 1944. He spent most of his academic career at the University of Notre Dame, Louisiana State University, the University of Munich and the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. More information about him can be found under the Eric Voegelin tab on this website.

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