Walter Biemel

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Walter Biemel (February 19, 1918 in Kronstadt, present-day Romania, Topčider; – March 6, 2015 in Aachen) was a Romanian-German philosopher.

Walter Biemel. Signature 2008

Born in Transylvania as the son of the director of the Kronstadt Philharmonic Orchestra, he studied philosophy, psychology, sociology and art history in Bucharest from 1937 to 1941 under Mircea Eliade, among others. In 1942, Biemel went to University of Freiburg with the draft of an unrealized dissertation on the concept of nature (Naturbegriff) in Novalis. Instead, he became a student of Martin Heidegger and developed his own areas of specialization in phenomenology and the philosophy of art.

After the closure of Freiburg University in the fall of 1944, Biemel went to the Husserl Archive in Leuven, where he wrote his treatise on Heidegger's concept of the world (Weltbegriff) in French, for which he received his doctorate in University of Cologne in 1950. He edited several volumes of the Husserliana and the Heidegger-Werkausgabe. While working at the Husserl Archive in Cologne, he wrote his habilitation thesis on significance of Kant's grounding of aesthetics for the philosophy of art,[1] with which he habilitated at the University of Cologne. From 1962 until his retirement, he taught as emeritus of philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen and from 1978 as a professor of philosophy of art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Walter Biemel's life and thinking were characterized by a lifelong, intensive engagement with modern art and literature; this is the basis of his art-philosophical approach. Since the establishment of the Museum Insel Hombroich, he has been closely associated with the Kulturraum Hombroich as an advisor for the philosophy section, both with the founding of the colloquium series Hombroich: Philosophie and with his commitment to the Raumortlabor Hombroich project. Walter Biemel has donated his entire archival and library estate to the Stiftung Insel Hombroich. His older brother Rainer Biemel became known in France as a Rilke translator and writer under the pseudonym Jean Rounault.

Honors

  • 1997 Siebenbürgisch-Sächsischer Kulturpreis
  • Seit 2000 Ehrenpräsident der Rumänischen Gesellschaft für Phänomenologie
  • 2003 Doctor honoris causa der Universität Bukarest

Publications (selection)

References

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