ABSTRACT
Eric Voegelin was born Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin in Cologne, Germany, in 1901, and died in California in 1985. He studied, and subsequently taught, in the Faculty of Law at the University of Vienna. His early writings ran him afoul of the Nazis, and he was forced to flee Austria following the Anschluss in 1938. He emigrated to the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1944, and teaching from 1942 to 1958 in the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University. In 1958 he returned to Germany, where he filled the chair at the University of Munich that had been vacant since the death of Max Weber (18641920), its previous occupant. In 1969 he accepted a position at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where he remained for the rest of his career.
