Kahler-Kreis refers to the circle, lasting from 1939 to the early 1970s, of intellectual friends of Erich Kahler

Erich Kahler

Erich von Kahler was a renowned mid-twentieth-century European-American literary scholar and essayist best known for scholarly works like The Tower and the Abyss: An Inquiry into the Transformation of Man ....

 and his second wife, Alice (Lili or Lilly) Loewy Kahler.This group, named the "Kahler-Kreis" by Charles Greenleaf Bell, had its physical center at the Kahlers' house, One Evelyn Place in Princeton, New Jersey. Erich Kahler, a scholar, author, and lecturer, arrived in Princeton in 1939 as a financially destitute Jewish refugee from the Nazi regime. One Evelyn Place welcomed Jewish intellectual refugees from Europe and was filled with visitors, boarders, and cultural conversation. The Einstein family, the Thomas Mann family, and Hermann Broch

Hermann Broch

Hermann Broch was a 20th century Austrian writer, considered one of the major Modernists.-Life:Broch was born in Vienna to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately...

 were close friends of the Kahlers. The Kahler circle of friends also included Erwin Panofsky

Erwin Panofsky

Erwin Panofsky was a German art historian, whose academic career was pursued mostly in the U.S. after the rise of the Nazi regime. Panofsky's work remains highly influential in the modern academic study of iconography...

, Hetty Goldman, Ernst Kantorowicz

Ernst Kantorowicz

Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz was a German-Jewish historian of medieval political and intellectual history, known for his 1927 book Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite on Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and in particular The King's Two Bodies .Kantorowicz was born in Posen to a wealthy, assimilated...

, Kurt Gödel

Kurt Gödel

Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the...

, and the painter Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content.-Biography:...

.

Archival material related to the Kahler-Kreis

Alice Loewy Kahler (whose first husband was Paul Loewy, MD) was one of two daughters of Ignatz Pick (1870–1941), an art collector and successful art/antiques gallery owner in Vienna. She donated most of Erich Kahler's papers to the Princeton University Library. Another substantial bequest is at the Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History. The M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives at the State University of Albany, New York, has 13 cubic foot (0.368119011 m³) of items in its inventory of Erich (von) Kahler Papers, 1906-1968. In its Hermann Broch Archive, Yale University has about 300 items related to Erich Kahler. There are a few dozen items related to the Kahlers and the Kahler-Kreis at the Albert Einstein Archives, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.