Kant Biographien

This eight-volume collection will make available for the first time in one place all the relevant early sources of information concerning Immanuel Kant's life.

With the exception of the three standard memoirs by close friends which appeared after Kant's death in 1804 - by Ludwig Ernst Borowski, Reinhold Bernhard Jachmann and Ehregott Andreas Christoph Wasianski - informative biographies of Kant have been rare and far between.

This unique collection collects those three standard biographies together with other less known and more difficult to obtain biographical sketches.

Included, for example, are the "Anonymous Fragmente aus Kants Leben, Ein Biographischer Versuch" (1802), which was probably written by Johann Christoph Mortzfeld, the anonymous and largely critical "Ausserungen uber Kant, seinen Charakter und seine Meinungen, Von einem billingen Verehrer seiner Verdienste" (1804), written by Johan Daniel Matzger, a professor of anatomy at the University of Konigsberg, and the anonymous two-volume "Immanuel Kants Biographie" (1804), believed to have been written by Georg Samuel Albert Mellin. Volume 8 of the set contains a collection of smaller biographical pieces by Arthur Warda and others, as well as the rare and indispensable critical examination of the relative value of the different biographies by Karl Vorlander, "Die altesten Kant-Biographien, Eine kritische Studie" (1918).

With an introduction in German by leading Kant scholar Manfred Kuehn, author of the new Kant biography, "Immanuel Kant, A Life", this comprehensive collection of early biographies of the great German philosopher should be a vital resource for Kant scholars.