Illinois Authors

Paul Carus

Born: 1852 in Ilsenburg, Germany
Died: 1919 in LaSalle, Illinois

Connection to Illinois: Carus was invited by Edward C. Hegeler to help educate his children La Salle, Illinois in 1887. In 1888, he married to Hegeler's daughter Mary and they settled in La Salle.

Biography: Paul Carus was a pioneer in the promotion of interfaith dialogue. He was a renowned writer on philosophy and comparative religion and a major influence in introducing Westerners to Buddhism and other Eastern concepts. Born at Ilsenburg in Germany on July 18, 1852, he received an excellent education - studied at the University of Greifswald and completed a degree at the University of Strasbourg, and then obtained his Ph. D. from the University of Tubingen. In 1884, he immigrated to the United States on the SS Grecian Monarch, settling in Chicago and then LaSalle, Illinois. In 1887 he was invited by Edward C. Hegeler, to help educate his children in the classics at the family home in La Salle, Illinois. Hegeler had come to the United States in 1857 and established a huge zinc mining business in central Illinois, along with other businesses and the Open Court Publishing Company in Chicago. Dr. Carus began contributing articles to a journal that Hegeler founded in 1887, and he became the first managing editor. In 1888, Carus married to Hegeler's daughter Mary. On May 23, 1889, Carus became a naturalized American citizen at a court in New York. Dr. Carus and his wife Mary had six children named Edward, Gustave, Paula, Elizabeth, Herman, and Alwin. They lived in La Salle, Illinois, at 1307 Seventh Street, with his father-in-law Edward C. Hegeler. The house, now known as the Hegeler Carus Mansion was built for Edward C. Hegeler in 1876. The Carus family also lived for a time at the Julius W. Hegeler I Home, another historic mansion in La Salle. That house was designed by Chicago architects Pond and Pond, who also designed the L. W. Rogers Building, headquarters of the Theosophical Society in America. Because Paul Carus brought Buddhist visitors to stay at his home, La Salle became known as “Buddhism’s Gateway to the West.”

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction; History; Non-Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Web: https://hegelercarus.org/
Web: https://theosophy.wiki/en/Paul_Carus
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Carus

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