The philosopher Constantin Brunner, born in Altona on August 27, 1862 and
died in The Hague on August 27, 1937, is one of the influential German-Jewish intellectuals of the early 20th century.
His work has attracted many intellectuals, artists and members of youth movements, but Brunner has also deterred many people because of his relentless search for a philosophically-based "true" way of life. The effect of this thought has been violently interrupted by the Nazis. The great circle of friends and admirers of Brunners had been smashed since 1933 and the books burned.
After the war the memory of Brunner was preserved by the Internationaal Constantin Brunner Institute in The Hague and his works were re-published, but Brunner's thinking was hardly accepted in recent discourses. Most recently, Brunner's personality and his relationship with the contemporaries are moving into the angle of view. Recent research has thus led to a symposium that took place at the Jewish Museum Berlin on the occasion of the 150th birthday of Brunner.
"What you think wrong,
you have to live wrong."
- from "Die Lehre", 1908
Brunner laid down his philosophy in fourteen larger works and about two dozen essays. His thinking is based on epistemological and scientific-theoretical questions, contains a concrete psychology and leads into a theory of society and state, illustrated by the example of the "Jewish question". He also studied language-critical, but also ontological and religious-critical questions.
For Brunner, the life-practical implementation of his philosophy remained central. To this he sought critical articles on current topics, but also, last but not least, sustainably in his personal environment. This is proved by his extensive correspondence.