Jaeger, Werner

Jaeger, Werner (Wilhelm) (1888–1961) classicist; born in Lobberich, Germany. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Berlin, where he studied with Wilamowitz, in 1914. Afterward, when only 26, he assumed the chair at the University of Basel, Switzerland, a position once held by Friedrich Nietzsche. In 1921 he returned to the University of Berlin and took up Wilamowitz's chair. Although his works on Aristotle and the Cappadocian Church Father Gregory of Nyssa are still highly regarded, he is best known for the less scholarly Paideia (1933, 1943, 1944), which examines the educational, intellectual, and spiritual development and achievements of the Greeks. He began the Paideia in Germany and finished it in the United States, where he taught at the University of Chicago (1936–39) and Harvard (1939–58) and strongly influenced such classicists as John H. Finley and Gilbert Highet.