Early Life
Rosenstock-Huessy was born Eugen Friedrich Moritz Rosenstock in Berlin, Germany on July 6, 1888, to Theodor and Paula Rosenstock. His father, a scholarly man, was a banker and a member of the Berlin Stock Exchange. He was the only son among seven surviving children.
Despite his parents’ Jewish heritage, his family “celebrated some Christian holidays, in keeping with other German families at the time.” He joined the Lutheran Protestant Church at age 17 and was christened at age 18. He remained a devout proponent of Christianity throughout the rest of his life.
After graduating from a secondary school (gymnasium) with very high academic standards and an emphasis on classical languages and literature, Rosenstock-Huessy pursued law studies at the universities of Zurich, Heidelberg, and Berlin. In 1909 the University of Heidelberg granted him a doctorate in law. In 1912 he became a Privatdozent, a preliminary qualification to becoming a professor, at the University of Leipzig, where he taught constitutional law and the history of law until 1914.
In 1914 Rosenstock-Huessy visited Florence, Italy to conduct historical research. There he met Margrit Hüssy, a Swiss art history major. They married later that year. World War I broke out shortly thereafter.
Read more about this topic: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child’s life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday. Things must not be done in him which are venial in the week-day classes. He is paid for this business of leading a stricter life than other people. It is his raison d’être.... This is why the clergyman is so often called a “vicar”Mhe being the person whose vicarious goodness is to stand for that of those entrusted to his charge.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)