Werner Jaeger was born on 30 July 1888 in Lobberich, Germany. A towering figure in philology and classics in the early twentieth century, he is known for his work on Aristotle and Hellenistic culture. In 1914, Jaeger became Professor at the University of Basel, taking a comparable position at the University of Kiel in 1915. He moved to the University of Berlin in 1921, and then immigrated to the United States in 1936 due to Hitler’s rise to power. Appointed Professor of Greek and Ancient Philosophy at the University of Chicago, he settled at Harvard in 1939, remaining there until his death.
Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1944, his most prominent work, Paideia (1934), comprised three volumes on education, culture and the ideals that formed Greek civilization from Homer to Demosthenes. He called it his ‘three-volume history of the Greek mind’. Other publications include Aristoteles (1923), Demosthenes (1934), Humanism and Theology (1943), Two Rediscovered Works of Ancient Christian Literature: Gregory of Nyssa and Macarius (1954), Scripta Minora (1960), and Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (1961).
