Editing Oswald Spengler (section)

=== Career ===
Spengler briefly served as a teacher in [[Saarbrücken]] then in [[Düsseldorf]]. From 1908 to 1911 he worked at a grammar school (''Realgymnasium'') in [[Hamburg]], where he taught science, German history, and mathematics. Biographers report that his life as a teacher was uneventful.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Oswald Spengler - an intellectual life |url=https://engelsbergideas.com/portraits/oswald-spengler-an-intellectual-life/ |access-date=2024-11-09 |website=Engelsberg ideas |language=en}}</ref>

In 1911, following his mother's death, he moved to [[Munich]], where he lived for the rest of his life. While there, he was a cloistered scholar, supported by his modest inheritance. Spengler survived on very limited means and was marked by loneliness. He owned no books, and took work as a tutor and wrote for magazines to earn additional income. Due to a severe heart problem, Spengler was exempted from military service.{{Sfn|Engels|2019|p=4}} During the war, his inheritance was useless because it was invested overseas; thus, he lived in genuine poverty for this period.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}}

He began work on the first volume of ''The Decline of the West'' intending to focus on Germany within Europe. However, the [[Agadir Crisis]] of 1911 affected him deeply, so he widened the scope of his study. According to Spengler the book was completed in 1914, but the first edition was published in the summer of 1918, shortly before the end of [[World War I]].{{Sfn|Engels|2019|p=5}} Spengler wrote about the years immediately prior to World War I in ''Decline'':

{{Blockquote|At that time the World-War appeared to me both as imminent and also as the inevitable outward manifestation of the historical crisis, and my endeavor was to comprehend it from an examination of the spirit of the preceding centuries—not years. ... Thereafter I saw the present—the approaching World-War—in a quite other light. It was no longer a momentary constellation of casual facts due to national sentiments, personal influences, or economic tendencies endowed with an appearance of unity and necessity by some historian's scheme of political or social cause-and-effect, but the type of ''historical change of phase'' occurring within a great historical organism of definable compass at the point preordained for it hundreds of years ago.<ref>Spengler, Oswald. [https://archive.org/stream/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler/Decline_Of_The_West#page/n62/mode/1up ''The Decline of the West'']. V. 1, Alfred A. Knopf, 1926, pp. 46–47.</ref>}}

When the first volume of ''The Decline of the West'' was published, it was a wild success.{{Efn|The original Preface is dated December 1917 and ends with Spengler expressing hope that "his book would not be unworthy of German military achievements".}} Spengler became an instant celebrity.{{Sfn|Engels|2019|p=5}} The national humiliation of the [[Treaty of Versailles]] (1919), followed by [[economic depression]] in 1923 and [[hyperinflation]], seemed to prove Spengler right. ''Decline'' comforted Germans because it could be used as a rationale for their diminished pre-eminence, i.e. due to larger world-historical processes. The book met with wide success outside of Germany as well, and by 1919 had been translated into several other languages.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}}

The second volume of ''Decline'' was published in 1922. In it, Spengler argued that German [[socialism]] differed from [[Marxism]]; instead, he said it was more compatible with traditional German conservatism. Spengler declined an appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the [[University of Göttingen]], saying he needed time to focus on writing.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}}

The book was widely discussed, even by those who had not read it. Historians took umbrage at his unapologetically non-scientific approach. Novelist [[Thomas Mann]] compared reading Spengler's book to reading [[Arthur Schopenhauer]]'s works for the first time. Academics gave it a mixed reception. Sociologist [[Max Weber]] described Spengler as a "very ingenious and learned dilettante", while philosopher [[Karl Popper]] called the thesis "pointless". The first volume of ''Decline'' was published in English by [[Alfred A. Knopf]] in 1926, the second in 1928.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Frye |first=Northrop |date=1974 |title="The Decline of the West" by Oswald Spengler |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024181 |journal=Daedalus |volume=103 |issue=1 |pages=1–13 |issn=0011-5266}}</ref>