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Erich von Kahler was a renowned mid-twentieth-century European-American literary scholar, essayist, and teacher best known for scholarly works such as The Tower and the Abyss: An Inquiry into the Transformation of Man.
Kahler was born to a Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied philosophy, literature, history, art history, sociology, and psychology at the University of Munich, the University of Berlin, the University of Heidelberg, and the University of Freiburg before earning his doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1911. In 1912, he married his first wife, Josephine. In 1933, deprived of his German citizenship by the Nazi regime, he left Germany, emigrating to the United States in 1938 after a period of residence in England. He became a U.S. citizen in 1944, where he was known as Erich Kahler.
In the U.S. he taught at The New School for Social Research, Black Mountain College, Cornell University, and Princeton University. He was a friend of Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and Herman Broch, who wrote Tod des Vergils at Kahler's home, One Evelyn Place in Princeton. Kahler's friends became known as the Kahler-Kreis. Like Einstein, Kahler was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. He met and married his second wife, Alice Loewy, while in Princeton. Kahler's entire family was very close friends with Einstein. Kahler, his wife Alice, and his mother Antoinette von Kahler corresponded with Einstein.
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