About Dietrich von Hildebrand
Dietrich Richard Alfred von Hildebrand (German: [ˈhɪldəbʁant]; 12 October 1889 – 26 January 1977) was a German Catholic philosopher and religious writer. Hildebrand was called "the twentieth-century Doctor of the Church" by Pope Pius XII. He was a leading philosopher in the realist phenomenological and personalist movements, producing works in every major field of philosophy, including ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical anthropology, social philosophy, and aesthetics. Pope John Paul II greatly admired the philosophical work of Hildebrand, remarking once to his widow, Alice von Hildebrand, "Your husband is one of the great ethicists of the twentieth century." Pope Benedict XVI also had a particular admiration and regard for Hildebrand, who knew Ratzinger as a young priest in Munich: "When the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time." Hildebrand is known for his consistent, public opposition to Nazism before and during World War II. Upon the outbreak of the First World War Hildebrand was drafted into service as a physician's assistant in Munich, serving as a kind of surgical nurse. When Hitler came to power in 1933 Hildebrand fled Germany, going first to Italy, and then to Vienna. Von Hildebrand was particularly known for his opposition to Nazi ideology, and he emigrated from Germany in 1933 after being banned from teaching of publishing his writings under censorship in Nazi Germany. There, with the support of the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, he founded and edited an anti-Nazi weekly paper, Der Christliche Ständestaat ("The Christian Corporative State").
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