Werner Jaeger

Who was Werner Jaeger?

Werner Wilhelm Jaeger was a classicist of the 20th century.

Jaeger was born in Lobberich, Rhenish Prussia. He attended school at Lobberich and at the Gymnasium Thomaeum in Kempen. Jaeger studied at the University of Marburg and University of Berlin. He received a Ph.D. from the latter in 1911 for a dissertation on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. His habilitation was on Nemesios of Emesa. Only 26 years old, Jaeger was called to a professorship with chair at the University of Basel in Switzerland. One year later he moved to a similar position at Kiel, and in 1921 he returned to Berlin. Jaeger remained in Berlin until 1936 when he emigrated to the United States because he was unhappy with the rise of National Socialism. Jaeger expressed his veiled disapproval with Humanistische Reden und Vortraege and his book on Demosthenes based on his Sather lecture from 1934. Jaeger's messages were fully understood in German university circles; the ardent Nazi followers sharply attacked Jaeger.

In the United States, Jaeger worked as a full professor at the University of Chicago from 1936 to 1939, at which time he moved to Harvard University to continue his edition of the Church father Gregory of Nyssa on which he had started before World War I. Jaeger remained in Cambridge, Massachusetts, until his death. The Canadian philosopher James Doull was among his students at Harvard.