Hermann Keyserling — philosopher and writer with roots in the Russian Empire
Hermann Alexander Graf von Keyserling was born on 20 July (8 July, Old Style) 1880 at Könno manor, near Pernau, in the Livonia Governorate of the Russian Empire, now Kõnnu in Estonia, into a wealthy family of the Baltic German nobility, the Keyserlingks. He was educated by private tutors and at the gymnasium in Pernau, then studied at the universities of Geneva, Dorpat, Heidelberg and Vienna, where he took a doctorate in geology in 1902.
After years in Paris and Berlin, in 1908 he settled on the family estate of Rayküll in Estonia, formerly the home of his grandfather Alexander Keyserling, which remained his permanent residence until the Revolution. In 1911 he set out on a journey around the world, through India, China, Japan and America; in Calcutta in 1912 he met Rabindranath Tagore, whom he saw again in London in 1913. He shaped his notes into Das Reisetagebuch eines Philosophen, The Travel Diary of a Philosopher, written at Rayküll and completed in 1918; published in 1919, it made him famous almost overnight, and Hermann Hesse called it an extraordinary performance. He spent the war years at Rayküll.
The Revolution deprived him of his estates and most of his fortune, and in 1918 he left Estonia for Germany, staying first at the Bismarck family's Friedrichsruh. He settled in Darmstadt in November 1919, and in 1920 founded the Society for Free Philosophy and its School of Wisdom, which held annual conferences and published the series Der Weg zur Vollendung and Der Leuchter; Tagore attended a 'Tagore Week' there in 1921. Its activity was at its height until 1927. He lectured widely in Europe and America and wrote further books, among them Creative Understanding (1922), which were translated into many languages and were especially admired in France.
Under National Socialism, to avoid further interference with his work, he left Darmstadt in 1939 for his mother-in-law's estate at Schönhausen. After the war he moved with his family to Innsbruck, where he was preparing to reopen the School of Wisdom when he died on 26 April 1946, aged sixty-five. His archive is held at the University and State Library in Darmstadt.
"Lived on the family estate of Rayküll in Estonia until the Revolution; left for Germany in 1918 and settled in Darmstadt in 1919."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Könno, Livonia Governorate (now Kõnnu, Estonia)
Born at Könno manor, in the Livonia Governorate of the Russian Empire, in 1880 into the Baltic German noble family of Keyserlingk, he studied in Pernau and Dorpat and lived on the family estate of Rayküll in Estonia until the Revolution of 1917 cost him his estate and fortune.
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Könno, Livonia Governorate (now Kõnnu, Estonia). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.