Jacob Taubes (1923–1987)

Jacob Taubes was born to a Jewish family in a long line of Talmudic scholars in Vienna, Austria. He fled the Nazis to Zurich, Switzerland, where he studied at the university and earned his doctorate in 1947 at age 24. His dissertation, "Abendländische Eschatologie" (Occidental Eschatology), on how ancient religious doctrines shaped modern thinking about history and the self, was published in book form the same year. Following family tradition, he was ordained a rabbi and moved to New York City to complete his studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary. In 1949, he married Susan Feldmann (later Taubes), a writer, with whom he had two children. They settled in Jerusalem, Israel, where he taught at Hebrew University from 1951 to 1953. After a break with his mentor Gershom Scholem, Taubes and his family returned to the USA, where he was first a Rockefeller scholar at Harvard University, then a lecturer at Princeton University, and finally a professor of history of religions and philosophy of religion at Columbia University in New York. He and Susan Taubes divorced in 1963. From 1966 until his death in 1987, he taught at the Freie Universität (Free University) in Berlin, where he married his second wife, philosopher Margherita von Brentano. Although he only published one book, his articles and transcripts of classes were later collected and published. Today he is best remembered for his writings and talks on Saint Paul.