Karl Löwith began his academic career shortly after World War I at the University of Munich, but because of the disorders occasioned by Kurt Eisner's Räterepublik, he soon transferred to the more peaceful surroundings at the University of Freiburg.¹ Initially he studied both biology and philosophy but the latter soon became his chief interest. Also, at this time, two figures in particular exerted an important influence upon him, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. From Husserl, Löwith acquired an understanding and appreciation of the phenomenological mode of investigation and interpretation and a lasting impression of the extra-temporal or suprahistorical scholar, i.e. the thinker who is apparently unmoved by the upheavals and developments within the socio-political realm. In the preface to his book, Von Hegel bis Nietzsche, dedicated to Husserl, Löwith observed, "In those days (the 1923 Ruhr crisis), when one feared Freiburg's occupation by French troops, I shall never forget how this great scholar (Husserl) continued his expositions with an increased calm and confidence, as if nothing in the world could disturb the seriousness of scientific investigation. And when I visited him for the last time at his home to which he was now restricted, shortly after the upheaval [1933], it was again the impression of a free spirit attained to wisdom..." ²