Oswald Spengler, one of the most controversial historians of the
twentieth century, was born in Blankenburg, Germany, in 1880. He
studied mathematics, philosophy, and history in Munich and Berlin.
Except for his doctor’s thesis on Heraclitus, he published nothing
before the first volume of The Decline of the West, which appeared
when he was thirty-eight. The Agadir crisis of 1911 provided the
immediate incentive for his exhaustive investigations of the
background and origins of our civilization. Spengler chose his main
title in 1912, finished a draft of the first volume two years
later, and published it in 1918. The second, concluding volume was
published in 1922. The Decline of the West was first published in
this country in 1926 (Vol. 1) and 1928 (Vol. 2); this abridged
edition was first published here in 1962.
For many years Spengler lived quietly in his home in Munich,
thinking, writing, and pursuing his hobbies–collecting pictures and
primitive weapons, listening to Beethoven quartets, and reading the
comedies of Shakespeare and Molière. He took occasional trips to
the Harz Mountains and to Italy. In 1936, three weeks before his
fifty-sixth birthday, he died in Munich of a heart attack.
“Provocative and often dazzling. . . . An exciting excursion
through history.” –Time
“Audacious, profound . . . exciting and magnificent.”
–The New Republic
“This grand panorama, this imaginative sweep, this staggering
erudition, this Nietzschean prose, with its fine color and ringing
force, mark a work that must endure.” –The New York Sun
“With monumental learning . . . Spengler surveys man’s cosmic
march. . . . Always forceful . . . eloquent.”
–The New York Times
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