Ziegler, Leopold

Born Apr. 30, 1881, in Karlsruhe; died Nov. 25, 1958, in Überlingen. Idealist philosopher of the Federal Republic of Germany.

From 1923, Ziegler was a free-lance writer. In his philosophy he was close to the “philosophy of life”—specifically, to G. Simmel and the “wisdom school” of H. Keyserling. Ziegler’s thinking was influenced by F. Nietzsche’s idea of a Utopian renewal of culture and life on the basis of a new myth, E. von Hartmann’s metaphysics of the unconscious, and A. Drews’ proposed modern version of godless religion.

As was true of other followers of romanticism, the goal of Ziegler’s creative work was to transcend intellectualism in the name of a wholly intuitive relationship to life. This relationship, according to Ziegler, was to be constructed around an “atheistic”—or, more precisely, a pantheistic—religion. In the 1930’s, under the influence of J. J. Bachofen, J. G. Frazer, and C. G. Jung, Ziegler took traditional myth and ritual as his subject matter in an attempt to define “the eternal spiritual heritage of mankind.”