ABSTRACT
Johann Karl (sometimes Carl) Friedrich Rosenkranz was born in Magdeburg on 23 April 1805, as the son of a tax official. He studied theology, philosophy and German philology in Berlin, Halle and Heidelberg, where he came under the influence of Karl Daub (1765-1836) and where he later received his doctorate. In 1828, he was appointed Privatdozent in Halle, where he had submitted a thesis on Spinoza; soon afterwards he became professor “extraordinarius.” Although initially unimpressed by Hegel-occasionally attending his lectures in Berlin-he began reading his works more intensively in Halle and from 1831 participated actively in the Hegelian circle there. Having received a professorship in Berlin, he became friends with Hegel himself and even attended his birthday celebration a few weeks before Hegel’s death. In 1833 Rosenkranz became professor “ordinarius” of philosophy at the University of Königsberg (then Prussia) as the successor of Johann Friedrich Herbart (17761841). Apart from a brief political career in Berlin during the revolutionary crisis of 1848-49, he remained in Königsberg, where he died on 14 June 1879.
