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RESEARCH PRODUCT

“Not in Possession of Any Weltanschauung”: Otto Neugebauer’s Flight from Nazi Germany and His Search for Objectivity in Mathematics, in Reviewing, and in History

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Two major factors have to be considered to account for Neugebauer’s “Weltanschauung”, in particular his apparent or real rejection of philosophical or political judgments. On the one hand, Neugebauer, as a mathematician and a historian, had to cope, with the double character of mathematics as a science in its continuity and universality, independent of time, and of mathematics as a characteristic and fundamental product of each individual culture. On the other hand emphasis has to be put on Neugebauer being torn between organizational work (institution building, reviewing, editing) and historical research. One has to consider the vicissitudes of Neugebauer’s long and eventful life, which was highlighted by a series of highs and lows and marked by many contradictory, often frustrating and sobering political experiences, mainly connected to repeated emigration.