Ernst Kantorowicz

About the author

Ernst Kantorowicz (1895–1963) was a German historian whose work reshaped the study of medieval political and intellectual history. Born in Poznań, he made his name with the 1927 biography Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite, a sweeping portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. His masterwork, The King's Two Bodies (1957), dissected medieval and early modern ideologies of monarchy and the state with remarkable conceptual depth.

Elected to both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he spent his final years in Princeton, leaving a lasting mark on historical scholarship.