Heinz Heimsoeth was a German historian of philosophy.

Heimsoeth began his studies at Heidelberg in 1905, but soon transferred to Berlin, where he studied with Wilhelm Dilthey

Wilhelm Dilthey

Wilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist and hermeneutic philosopher, who held Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of...

, Alois Riehl

Alois Riehl

The philosopher Alois Adolf Riehl was born in Bozen in Austria .The brother of Josef Riehl, he was a Neo-Kantian and worked as a professor at Graz, then Freiburg and finally in Berlin, where he commissioned Mies van der Rohe to design his house in Neubabelsberg.For Riehl, philosophy was not the...

, and Ernst Cassirer

Ernst Cassirer

Ernst Cassirer was a German philosopher. He was one of the major figures in the development of philosophical idealism in the first half of the 20th century...

. Due to his interest in Kant

KANT

KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...

 he transferred in 1907 to Marburg, where he studied with Hermann Cohen

Hermann Cohen

Hermann Cohen was a German-Jewish philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, and he is often held to be "probably the most important Jewish philosopher of the nineteenth century".-Life:...

 and Paul Natorp

Paul Natorp

Paul Gerhard Natorp was a German philosopher and educationalist, considered one of the co-founders of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. He was known as an authority on Plato....

. He graduated in 1911 with a thesis on Descartes

René Descartes

René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...

. After a year studying in Paris with Henri Bergson

Henri Bergson

Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...

 he was habilitated

Habilitation

Habilitation is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in several European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires the candidate to write a professorial thesis based on independent...

 with a thesis on Leibniz.

After two years teaching at Marburg, he was appointed Professor at the University of Königsberg

University of Königsberg

The University of Königsberg was the university of Königsberg in East Prussia. It was founded in 1544 as second Protestant academy by Duke Albert of Prussia, and was commonly known as the Albertina....

 in 1923. In 1931 he transferred to a chair in philosophy at Cologne

University of Cologne

The University of Cologne is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, an association of Germany's leading research universities...

.

After the Nazi seizure of power

Machtergreifung

Machtergreifung is a German word meaning "seizure of power". It is normally used specifically to refer to the Nazi takeover of power in the democratic Weimar Republic on 30 January 1933, the day Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, turning it into the Nazi German dictatorship.-Term:The...

 in 1933 Heimsoeth himself joined the Nazi Party and was named Dean

Dean (education)

In academic administration, a dean is a person with significant authority over a specific academic unit, or over a specific area of concern, or both...

 of the University of Cologne, a position he held until the 1943/44 academic year. He became Professor Emeritus in 1954.

Literary works

• Die sechs großen Themen der abendländischen Metaphysik und der Ausgang des Mittelalters, Stilke, Berlin 1922, Nachdruck der unveränderten 3. Auflage, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1987, ISBN 3-534-00076-5, translated into English as The Six Great Themes of Western Metaphysics and The End Of The Middle Ages, Wayne State University Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0814324776
• Fichte, E. Reinhardt, München 1923
• Metaphysik der Neuzeit, München/Berlin 1934, Nachdruck Oldenboug, München 1967
• Geschichtsphilosophie, Bouvier, Bonn 1948
• Metaphysische Voraussetzungen und Antriebe in Nietzsches "Immoralismus", Steiner, Mainz 1955
• Windelband, Wilhelm: Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie. Mit einem Schlußkapitel "Die Philosophie im 20. Jahrhundert" und einer Übersicht über den Stand der philosophiegeschichtlichen Forschung, edited by Heinz Heimsoeth, Tübingen 1957, ISBN 3-16-838032-6
• Atom, Seele, Monade. Historische Ursprünge und Hintergründe von Kants Antinomie der Teilung, Steiner, Mainz 1960
• Studien zur Philosophiegeschichte, Kölner Universitätsverlag, Köln 1961
• Hegels Philosophie der Musik, Bouvier, Bonn 1964 (aus Hegel-Studien Bd. 2, 1963, S. 162 – 201)
• Transzendentale Dialektik. Ein Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 4 Bände, de Gruyter, Berlin 1966–71
• Studien zur Philosophie Immanuel Kants, Bouvier, Bonn 2. Aufl. 1971, ISBN 3-416-00437-X