Bernhard Alexander, Hungarian Jewish writer and professor of philosophy and esthetics; born at Budapest April 13, 1850. He was educated in his native town, and later attended German universities, pursuing chiefly the study of philosophy, esthetics, and pedagogy. Upon his return to Hungary he was appointed to a professorship in a realschule of Budapest, and in 1878 was admitted as a docent into the faculty of philosophy at the University of Budapest, where he became professor in 1895. Beginning in 1892 he lectured on dramaturgy and esthetics at the National Theater Academy, and on the latter science and the history of civilization at the Francis Joseph Polytechnicum. He was a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Science and a member of the Kisfaludy Society. His chief works are: A Filosafia Történetének Eszméje Tekintettel a Történetre Általában (Budapest, 1878); Kant Élete, Fejlödése és Filosofiája (crowned by the Academy of Science, 1889); A XIX. Ázszad Pessimismusa, Schopenhauer és Hartmann (Budapest, 1884, prize essay). Alexander, together with Prof. Józef Bánóczi, later edited the Filosofiai Irók Tára series. Among its volumes were his popular translations, to which he has added annotations, of Rene Descartes, David Hume, and the Prolegomena to Immanuel Kant. Conjointly with Bánóczi he translated Kant's Kritik der Reinen Vernunft. He was a very active writer on pedagogical subjects. From 1882 to 1886 Alexander edited the pedagogical journal Magyar Tanügy, and in 1891 the review Országos Közepiskolai Tanárok Közlönye.
Alexander died in Budapest in 1927.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jewish Encyclopedia. 1901–1906.