December 28, 1937

Bernd Magnus (December 28, 1937 to November 3, 2014), a philosopher at University of California Riverside, was a dog person. We read  "Growing up, he had a Doberman beagle mix named Princess, and later a variety of dogs: a fox terrier, Chihuaha, a sheltie, a collie, and a Golden Retriever, in addition to a beloved cat.

We also relied on this remembrance of Bernd Magnus, for a biographical perspective.

'Bernd Magnus,.. a survivor of the Holocaust, was an internationally recognized expert on 19th and 20th century European philosophy and, more specifically, a leading scholar of Friedrich Nietzsche.

'Born in Danzig, Germany, Mr. Magnus immigrated to the United States in 1947. He was 4 when he and his mother and sister were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they lived for a year and a half. They escaped when they were being transferred to Auschwitz and their train was bombed by American troops. The family spent the rest of the war in hiding and on the run, Rabbi Suzanne Singer of Temple Beth El said in a eulogy delivered during a Nov. 10 memorial service.

'Bernd Magnus’ specialization in German philosophy was an effort to understand “the mentality of a society that was so advanced in terms of arts, letters, culture and science, yet capable of the most intentionally cruel crime against humanity,” Rabbi Singer said. Mr. Magnus concluded that “it was not specifically the German character that was responsible for the Shoah (Holocaust) but, rather, and to his dismay, the banal quality of evil that we are all capable of.”
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'After undergraduate studies at CCNY and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1967, Professor Magnus joined the UCR faculty in 1969. He was a longtime member of UCR’s Department of Philosophy, serving as its chair from 1972 to 1976 and from 1979 to 1983. He also was appointed an associate dean in the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences,... and was the founding director of UCR’s Center for Ideas and Society.

'Besides publications on Marx, Heidegger, and various postmodern thinkers, he authored or co-authored two pioneering books on Nietzsche, co-edited the influential “Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche,” served on the editorial board for the “Complete Works of Nietzsche,” and was the founder of the North American Nietzsche Society. He also received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for his research on Nietzsche.
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'In addition to his renown as an expert on Nietzsche, [he wrote the Britannica article on Nietzche] friends knew “Bernie” as a sports enthusiast, Reck noted. “Besides playing tennis, softball, and basketball himself, he owned season tickets for Anaheim Angels games for decades,” he said.

'Professor Magnus is survived by his wife, Lore Woodcock Magnus, his children, David Magnus and Victoria Varnals, his grandsons, Tyler and Ryan Varnals, and his sister, Miriam Eis. ...'