Hans Meyerhoff (1914–1965)

Hans Meyerhoff was born to a Jewish family in Brunswick (Braunschweig), Germany. He completed his studies at gymnasium (high school) before emigrating to the USA in 1934 because the Nazi Party banned Jewish students from German universities. He earned a bachelor of arts degree at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1936 and received a master's degree in German in 1938 before transferring to the Department of Philosophy. There he worked as a teaching assistant for Bertrand Russell, then a visiting professor. In 1942, he received his PhD degree in philosophy, and immediately went to work for the U.S. government. Assigned by the Army to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), he served in England, France, and Germany, was engaged in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944-45, and was present at the liberation of Dachau. After the war, he was employed by the State Department as Section Chief in the Division of Research for Europe, until he joined the faculty of the Department of Philosophy at UCLA in 1948. He became one of the University's most beloved teachers. Over the next 17 years, he also was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brandeis University, Columbia University, and the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Bonn, Germany.

As a philosopher, Prof. Meyerhoff was most interested in the human condition. He turned to history, the social sciences, and literature in his effort to understand the individual's place in the world and our responsibilities. He published articles on philosophy, literature, psychology, and politics, but is best known for his books Time in Literature (1955) and The Philosophy of History in Our Time (1959). He also translated into English Max Scheler's book Man's Place in Nature and Paul Friedlander's monumental three-volume work on Plato. He died in an auto accident in 1965, at age 50. At his death, he left behind the unfinished manuscript of his study of Existentialism.