Hans Jonas

Hans Jonas, German-American philosopher and scholar of religion (born 1903 in Mönchengladbach, died 1993 in New York). He studied in Freiburg, Berlin and Marburg (with Husserl and Heidegger, among others). In 1933 he emigrated to London, and in 1935 to Jerusalem. From 1940 to 1945 he served as a soldier in the British Army with the Jewish Brigade Group. In 1943 he married Lore Weiner. From 1948 to 1949 he served as a soldier in the Israeli army. In 1949 he moved to Canada, where he became a fellow at McGill University in Montreal, and from 1950 to 1954 he was at Carleton University in Ottawa. In 1955 he moved to New York and accepted a professorship at the New School for Social Research. He was a visiting professor at Princeton, Columbia, the University of Chicago and the University of Munich. Major works: Gnosis und spätantiker Geist, 2 vols. (1933, 1954); The Imperative of Responsibility (1979); Technik, Medizin und Ethik (Technology, Medicine and Ethics, 1985); Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz (The Concept of God after Auschwitz, 1987); Materie, Geist und Schöpfung (Matter, Mind and Creation, 1988). In 1987 he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and was made an honorary citizen of Mönchengladbach. He received several honorary doctorates in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany, including one from the Free University of Berlin (1992). In January 1993 he was awarded the Premio Nonino (Percoto, Udine).