Hermann von Keyserling

Count Keyserling started out on his journey round the world in the year 1911, and the period from 1912 to 1918 has been devoted to the writing of it. The book was written in 1914; the proofs of volume 1 had already been passed for press and were in the possession of his publisher when the war broke out, leaving the author in possession of the proofs of volume 2 without any means of returning them to his publisher. Count Keyserling's estates being on Russian soil, he had no opportunity of communicating with Germany. During the war years, however, he devoted a great deal of time to going over his manuscripts, and the latter portion of volume 2 was entirely re-written. His object in writing this book was to find a means of self-expression. In 1918 a second crisis occurred in his worldly affairs, for as a result of the Russian revolution he was deprived of his estates and his fortune. He had to begin anew, to live entirely by his work as a refugee on German soil. In 1919 he married a granddaughter of Bismarck. The extraordinary success of the Travel Diary of a Philosopher in Germany was quickly seized upon by his publisher, Otto Reichl, at whose suggestion and at the invitation of the Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig von Hessen, he opened the School of Wisdom in Darmstatdt in 1920. He is now the head of a large movement of spiritual renewal, and he spends most of his time as a lecturer and public speaker. - Biographical note.

Count Hermann Alexander von Keyserling (July 20, 1880 April 26, 1946) was a Baltic German philosopher from the Keyserlingk family. His grandfather Alexander Keyserling was a notable geologist of Imperial Russia. He was born to a wealthy aristocratic family in the Kõnnu Manor, Pärnu County in Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire, now in Estonia. After his education at the universities of Dorpat (Tartu), Heidelberg, and Vienna, he took a trip around the world. He married Maria Goedela von Bismarck-Schönhausen, granddaughter of Otto von Bismarck. His son Arnold Keyserling followed his father's footsteps and became a renowned philosopher. Hermann Keyserling interested himself in natural science and in philosophy, and before World War I he was known both as a student of geology and as a popular essayist. The Russian Revolution deprived him of his estate in Livonia, and with the remains of his fortune he founded the Gesellschaft für Freie Philosophie (Society for Free Philosophy) at Darmstadt. The mission of this school was to bring about the intellectual reorientation of Germany. He was the first to use the term Führerprinzip. One of Keyserling's central claims was that certain "gifted individuals" were "born to rule" on the basis of Social Darwinism. Although not a doctrinaire pacifist, Keyserling believed that the old German policy of militarism was dead for all time and that Germany's only hope lay in the adoption of international, democratic principles. His best-known work is the Reisetagebuch eines Philosophen ("Travel-journal of a Philosopher"). The book also describes his travels in Asia, America and Southern Europe. He died at Innsbruck, Austria. - Wikipedia.