At the outbreak of the war, Ernst Cassirer enjoyed an international reputation as a leading figure in the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism. Still a Privatdozent after years at the University of Berlin and repeatedly thwarted from obtaining a chair of philosophy in Germany due to entrenched anti-Semitism, Cassirer’s erudite publications had garnered widespread recognition. Rudolf Eucken, recipient of the Nobel Prize and “a famous man,” as Cassirer writes to this wife, Toni, in 1911 even asked him out to lunch when invited to speak at the University of Jena. Numerous professors and “a huge crowd of other people” were in attendance. His works were on display in bookshop windows along with the announcement of his lecture in the spiritual capital of Weimar Classicism.