Karl Stern

Last updated
Karl Stern
Portrait of Karl Stern 1960s.jpg
Stern, 1950s
Born(1906-04-08)8 April 1906
Cham, Germany
Died7 November 1975(1975-11-07) (aged 69)
Montréal, Quebec, Canada
Occupation Neurologist, psychiatrist
Nationality German, Canadian
Period20th century
Genre Autobiography, devotional
Subject Psychiatry, religion
Notable worksPillar of Fire (1951), "The Flight from Woman"
SpouseLiselotte von Baeyer, (granddaughter of Adolf von Baeyer)
ChildrenAntony, Katherine, Michael, John

Karl Stern (April 8, 1906 - November 11, 1975) was a German Canadian neurologist and psychiatrist, and a Jewish convert to the Catholic Church. Stern is best known for the account of his conversion in Pillar of Fire (1951). [1]

Contents

Life and career

Stern was born in the small town Cham in Bavaria in 1906, to socially assimilated Jewish parents. There was no synagogue or rabbi in the town, and although regular services and classes were held under the direction of a cantor, Stern's religious education was minimal. As a teenager he sought to re-engage with the Jewish faith, and began attending an Orthodox synagogue, but he soon became an atheist Zionist.

He studied medicine at the Universities of Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt, and came to specialize in psychiatric research. In the course of undergoing psychoanalysis himself, he regained belief in God and returned to Orthodox Jewish worship. He emigrated from Nazi Germany in 1936, finding work in neurological research in England, and later as lecturer in neuropathology and assistant neuropathologist at the Montreal Neurological Institute, under Wilder Penfield. It was while in London that he began to take an interest in the Catholic faith.

In 1943, after much soul-searching, and ultimately influenced by encounters with Jacques Maritain and Dorothy Day, Stern converted to Christianity and was baptized as a Roman Catholic.

Stern married Liselotte von Baeyer, a bookbinder (died 1970) and they had four children: Antony, a psychiatrist (1937-1967), Katherine Skorzewska, Michael and John. Stern was significantly incapacitated by a stroke in 1970, although he continued working and died in Montreal in 1975.

Writings

Books

Much reprinted, most recently by Urbi Et Orbi Communications, 2001. ISBN   1-884660-12-6.
French translation, Le buisson ardent. Paris: Seuil, 1951.
Dutch translation, De vuurzuil. Antwerp: Sheed and Ward, 1951.
German translation, Die Feuerwolke. Salzburg: Müller, 1954.
French translation, La troisième révolution: essai sur la psychanalyse et la religion. Paris: Du Seuil, 1955.
German translation, Die dritte Revolution: Psychiatrie und Religion. Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1956.
Dutch translation, De derde revolutie: psychiatrie en religie. Utrecht: De Fontein, 1958.
German translation, Die Flucht vor dem Weib: zur Pathologie des Zeitgeistes. Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1968.
French translation, Refus de la femme. Montréal: Éditions HMH, 1968.

Other writings

Works about Stern

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Brodsky</span> Russian poet (1940–1996)

Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad, Soviet Union, in 1940, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972, settling in the United States with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at Mount Holyoke College, and at universities including Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, and Michigan. Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity". He was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Sandel</span> American political philosopher (born 1953)

Michael Joseph Sandel is an American political philosopher and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government Theory at Harvard Law School, where his course Justice was the university's first course to be made freely available online and on television. It has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world, including in China, where Sandel was named the 2011's "most influential foreign figure of the year". He is also known for his critique of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice in his first book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri Cole</span> American poet

Henri Cole is an American poet, who has published many collections of poetry and a memoir. His books have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Arabic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Farrar, Straus and Giroux</span> American book publishing company

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and Nobel Prizes. As of 2016 the publisher is a division of Macmillan, whose parent company is the German publishing conglomerate Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

Frederick Seidel is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice McDermott</span> American writer, novelist, essayist (born 1953)

Alice McDermott is an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Grossman</span> Israeli author

David Grossman is an Israeli author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. K. Williams</span> American poet, critic and translator (1936–2015)

Charles Kenneth "C. K." Williams was an American poet, critic and translator. Williams won many poetry awards. Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair (1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The Singing won the 2003 National Book Award and Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2005. The 2012 film The Color of Time relates aspects of Williams' life using his poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">August Kleinzahler</span> American poet (born 1949)

August Kleinzahler is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saul Friedländer</span> Israeli historian

Saul Friedländer is a Czech-Jewish-born historian and a professor emeritus of history at UCLA.

This is a bibliography of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vivian Gornick</span> American radical feminist critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist

Vivian Gornick is an American radical feminist critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Giroux</span> American book editor and publisher

Robert Giroux was an American book editor and publisher. Starting his editing career with Harcourt, Brace & Co., he was hired away to work for Roger W. Straus, Jr. at Farrar & Straus in 1955, where he became a partner and, eventually, its chairman. The firm was henceforth known as Farrar, Straus and Giroux, where he was known by his nickname, "Bob".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Élisabeth Roudinesco</span> French historian

Élisabeth Roudinesco is a French scholar, historian and psychoanalyst. She conducts a seminar on the history of psychoanalysis at the École Normale Supérieure.

Haim Watzman, is an American-born, Jerusalem-based writer, journalist, and translator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blanche Knopf</span> American book publisher

Blanche Wolf Knopf was the president of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and wife of publisher Alfred A. Knopf Sr., with whom she established the firm in 1915. Blanche traveled the world seeking new authors and was especially influential in the publication of European and Latin American literature in the United States.

Rita Guibert was an American author, journalist, editor, researcher and translator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maylis de Kerangal</span> French author (born 1967)

Maylis de Kerangal is a French author. Her novels deeply explore people in their work lives. She has won several awards for her work, and her novels have been published in several languages. Two have been adapted as films.

Monika Beisner is a German artist and book illustrator.

Delphine Minoui is a French journalist specializing in the Iranian world.

References

  1. Maloney, Stephen R. (1974). "The Works and Days of Karl Stern". The Georgia Review. 28 (2): 245–256. JSTOR   41397082.
  2. O'Donoghue, Dermot (1951). "Review of The Pillar of Fire". The Furrow. 2 (12): 724–726. JSTOR   27655888.
  3. Stewart, J. E. (1966). "The Flight to Woman". New Blackfriars. 47 (555): 591–593. doi:10.1111/j.1741-2005.1966.tb01023.x. JSTOR   43244285.