Busyn, Max, 1899-1976

The artist, Max Busyn, a Constantin-Brunner-friend was born in Łodz, Poland on November, 12th 1899. He died in Wiesbaden, Germany on August, 12th 1976. Max Busyn immigrated to Tel Aviv in 1934 but he returned to Germany two decades later in the 1950s.

The German-Jewish philosopher Constantin Brunner (originally Leo Wertheimer) was born in Altona near Hamburg on August, 27th 1862. His work was primarily inspired by Spinoza, Kant and Plato. Brunner was a follower of holism. His major paper was called Die Lehre von den Geistigen und vom Volk and it was published in 1908. Some of his followers were famous persons in Germany, for example the politician Walter Rathenau and the poet Rose Auslaender. Nevertheless his ideas never became very popular.

In 1933 Brunner had to leave Berlin after the Nazis burned his books. He moved to the Netherlands where he died in Den Haag on August 27th, 1937.

In 1948 Magdalena Kasch, one of Brunner's students and closest confidants, founded the Internationaal Constantin Brunner Instituut in Den Haag to publish the work of this philosopher again.

Sources: Bickel, Lothar: Constantin Brunner 1862 – 1937 . (in: Philosophia, Belgrad 1937) Bucharest, page 292 – 299.

From the guide to the Max Busyn Collection, 1903-1975, bulk 1930-1960, (Leo Baeck Institute)