Oswald Spengler
German historian and philosopher (1880-1936)
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German polymath whose areas of interest included history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering human history. Spengler's model of history postulates that human cultures and civilizations are akin to biological entities, each with a limited, predictable, and deterministic lifespan. He predicted that Western civilization would enter the period of pre‑death emergency around the year 2000, which would lead to 200 years of Caesarism (extra-constitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of government) before Western civilization's final collapse.
Spengler is regarded as a German nationalist and a critic of republicanism. He was a prominent member of the Weimar-era Conservative Revolution. While the Nazis had viewed his writings as a means to provide a "respectable pedigree" to their ideology, Spengler criticized Nazism for its racialist and antisemitic elements, and he came to be considered a persona non grata by the Nazi regime. He saw Benito Mussolini and entrepreneurial types, such as the mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, as examples of the impending Caesars of Western culture—later expressing disappointment in Mussolini's colonialist adventurism.
Biography
Early life and family
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler was born on 29 May 1880 in Blankenburg, Duchy of Brunswick, German Empire, the oldest surviving child of Bernhard Spengler (1844–1901) and Pauline Spengler (1840–1910), née Grantzow, the descendant of an artistic family. His elder brother was born prematurely in 1879, when his mother tried to move a heavy laundry basket, and died at the age of three weeks.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q57112. VIAF identifies the subject as 14778687. The Library of Congress control number is n50021162. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1880, 1936, 1918 and 1922.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oswald Spengler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.