The German writer Oswald Spengler was born at Blankenburg, Germany. Spengler is known almost entirely for his contribution to philosophy of history. After studying at the universities of Munich, Berlin, and Halle—chiefly natural science and mathematics, although he also read widely in history, literature, and philosophy—Spengler obtained a doctorate in 1904, with a thesis on Heraclitus, and embarked upon a career as a high school teacher. In 1911 he abandoned teaching to take up the penurious life of a private scholar in Munich, where the first volume of his only considerable work, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West), gradually took shape. This volume was published in 1918 at the moment of his country's defeat in World War I. Its pessimistic conclusions so exactly suited the prevailing mood that its author rocketed to instant but short-lived fame.

An ardent nationalist, Spengler has sometimes...