Voegelin, Eric

Voegelin, Eric (Herman Wilhelm)

(1901–85) political philosopher; born in Cologne, Germany. After studying and teaching law in Europe, he emigrated to the U.S.A. to escape Nazism, teaching at Louisiana State University (1942–58) and elsewhere in the U.S.A.; he was naturalized in 1944. He taught at the University of Munich (1958–69) before becoming a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif. He sought to develop a comprehensive philosophy of history and society, notably in his masterwork Order and History, published starting in 1956.