Geist and Zeitgeist

Hermann Broch achieved international recognition for his brilliant use of innovative literary techniques to present the entire range of human experience, from the biological to the metaphysical. Concerned with the problem of ethical responsibility in a world with no unified system of values, he turned to literature as the appropriate form for considering those human problems not subject to rational treatment.

Late in life, Broch began questioning his artistic pursuits and turned from literature to devote himself to political theory. While he is well known and highly regarded throughout the world as a novelist, he was equally accomplished as an essayist. These six essays give us a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the twentieth century's most original thinkers.

Hermann Broch was born in Vienna to a prosperous Jewish family in 1886. At the age of 41 he sold his family business and devoted himself to the study of philosophy and mathematics and began a career as a writer. Having escaped from Germany just before the outbreak of the Second World War, he lived most of the rest of his life in the United States. He died in New Haven in 1951.