September 9, 1937

German phenomenologist philosopher, Moritz A. Geiger, former professor at the University of Göttingen and head since 1933 of the Vassar philosophy department, died while travelling back to Vassar from Seal Point, ME., where he had been treated for a brief illness. He was 57 years old. A refugee from Nazi Germany, Dr. Geiger initially joined the Vassar faculty through the Institute for International Education and under the sponsorship of the Emergency Committee for Displaced German Scholars and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Dedicating the 1937 Vassarion to Professor Geiger, the Class of 1937 expressed, in The Miscellany News, “our very real admiration and affection for him, and our appreciation of the contribution which he has made to Vassar during the last four years. It is not only that his classes have been taught with an unfailing enthusiasm, imagination and keen perception; Professor Geiger has shown us also another aspect of scholarship, the breadth of humanity and understanding which such [a] fund of knowledge coupled with sympathetic insight can bring.” On December 7, American philosopher Ralph Barton Perry, the Edgar Pierce professor of philosophy at Harvard University, President MacCracken and Ruth Weiss ’38 spoke at a memorial service for Moritz Geiger in the Chapel.