Mannheim, Karl

Karl Mannheim was born in Budapest, Hungary, on March 27, 1893, into a middle-class Jewish family. He received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Budapest and early in his academic career worked under the renowned Marxist György Lukács. Following the takeover of Hungary in 1919 by a communist, anti-Semitic regime, Mannheim was forced to relocate to Heidelberg, Germany. It was here that he met his future wife and fellow academic (with a doctorate in psychology), Juliska Lang. In 1930, he was appointed to the position of director of the College of Sociology at Goethe University in Frankfurt, sharing a building with the famed Institute of Social Research and its critical theorists. Again, however, when Hitler came to power, anti-Semitism forced Mannheim to flee ...