Ferdinand Eckstein

Who was Ferdinand Eckstein?

Ferdinand Eckstein, Baron d'Eckstein, was a philosopher and playwright.

He was born in Copenhagen as the son of a German Jew who had converted to Protestantism. Eckstein converted to Catholicism in Rome under the influence of Friedrich Schlegel, and settled in France, after Napoleon's defeat. He worked from 1815 to 1830 as a police-inspector, and was an advocate of religious and civil liberty.

Eckstein was an Orientalist who believed that the study of Eastern texts and languages was the most important intellectual pursuit of his time. Nicknamed "Baron Sanskrit", he thought that God's revelation in its purest form could be found in the texts of ancient India.

Eckstein worked with Nodier, Hugo, Abel de Rémusat, Chateaubriand, Alexandre Guiraud and Delphine Gay in various literary enterprises and founded his own newspaper, The Catholic, where he advocated basing of metaphysics in history supported by linguistics, philology and mythography.