“The Essence of Classical Culture”: Werner Jaeger’s First Public Address in the United States

Abstract

This paper publishes the text of “The Essence of Greek Culture,” the first public address delivered by Werner Jaeger after his immigration to the United States in 1936. It was part of the program of a symposium sponsored by the Trustees of the University of Chicago in May, 1937 and provides important evidence indicating that Jaeger had begun to adapt ideas he had long supported in Ger­many to conditions in the United States. The text of the paper is preserved in the Archives of the University of Chicago and is published with its permission.

Keywords

• Werner Jaeger
• University of Chicago
• Greek culture
• education
• cosmopolitanism