Hans Baron

Hans Baron ( born June 22, 1900 in Berlin, † November 26, 1988 in Urbana (Illinois, USA) ) was a historian and Renaissance researchers.

Life

Hans Baron was born into a Jewish family in Berlin; his father was the medical officer Theodor Baron. He studied, among others History, philosophy and German in Leipzig and Berlin. Among his teachers were Walter Goetz, Friedrich Meinecke and cultural theorist Ernst Troeltsch, whose writings he published later in several anthologies. After the Nazi seizure of power and the dismissal from service of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, he emigrated via stations in Italy and the UK in 1938 in the United States. There, he taught and conducted research among other things in Princeton, Chicago and New York.

Importance

Due to the forced departure from his homeland in 1933, the emphasis of baron's academic career was in the United States. This is still accepted for the reception of his work. Baron left behind especially in the field of exploration of Italian Renaissance humanism lasting effect. He put forward the concept of citizens' " humanism " ( Civic Humanism ). His inclination to theory building was often attacked as questioned the concept. Nevertheless, it provided fertile new research approaches. The central figure of his work on this age was Leonardo Bruni.

Works

• Calvin's view state, and the Enlightened, Berlin / Munich 1924.
• (Ed.) Leonardo Bruni Aretino. Humanistic- philosophical writings, Leipzig / Berlin 1928.
• The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in the Age of Classicism and Tyranny of, Princeton 1955/1966.
• Humanistic and Political Literature in Florence and Venice at the beginning of the Quattrocento: Studies in criticism and chronology, Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1955 / 1968.
• From Petrarch to Bruni: Studies in humanistic and political Literature, Chicago 1968.
• In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought, 2 vols, Princeton 1988..
• Citizenship and Humanism in Renaissance Florence, Berlin 1992.