Ernst Bloch

Ernst Bloch is one of the most prominent radical philosophers of the twentieth century. Between 1905 and 1908, he studied philosophy, physics, and German philology at the University of Munich and the University of Würzburg. From 1908 to 1911, he lived in Berlin. His friendship with Georg Lukács led him to Heidelberg. During World War I, he emigrated to Switzerland, where he criticized the war and official German policy. In 1938, he emigrated to the United States, opposing Nazism and Hitler's National Socialism. He returned to Leipzig in the German Democratic Republic in 1949 and took up the chair of philosophy at the local university. In 1961, he criticized the political leadership of East Germany and emigrated to West Germany, where he became a visiting professor in Tübingen. He continued his writing until his death in Tübingen, focusing on philosophical topics from a critical perspective.