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Auction: 13002 - Orders, Decorations, Campaign Medals and Militaria
Lot: 384

The Austrian Honour Badge for Merit Awarded to Sir Karl Popper, One of the Outstanding Philosophers of the Twentieth Century
Austria, Republic, Honour Badge for Merit, Second Type, Sixth Class, 'Commander in Gold without Star' neck Badge, 68mm including eagle suspension x 49mm, gilt and enamel, extremely fine, with neck riband and lapel rosette, in Anton Reitterer, Vienna, case of issue, together with Bestowal Document and enclosure in presentation booklet named to Sir Karl Popper, Ph.D., M.A., and dated 17.3.1976

Sir Karl Raimund Popper, C.H., (1902-94) was born at Himmelhof, Vienna, the son of Dr. Simon Popper, an Austrian barrister of Jewish descent. His intellectual life spanned more than 75 years, with little interruption. He made outstanding (in some cases revolutionary) advances in the philosophy of science, social and political philosophy, and the history of philosophy among others. Sir Peter Medawar, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, said of him in 1972: 'I think Popper is incomparably the greatest philosopher of science that has ever been.'
Popper spent his formative years in Vienna, where his family passed onto him his twin interests in life: a deep interest in philosophy, and a love of music. Whilst teaching mathematics and physical science at a secondary school in Vienna, he completed and published his first major work, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Owing to his Jewish background, and the political climate in Austria at the time, Popper left his native land in 1937, and spent the War-years in New Zealand, where he wrote his two-volume masterpiece, The Open Society and Its Enemies, published in 1945. It proved him to be the most formidable and effective critic of totalitarianism, demolishing Marxism in particular, and establishing his international reputation. After the War he took up a post at the London School of Economics, was knighted in 1965, and despite retiring from academic life in 1969, continued to publish books and articles, and give lectures all over the world until his death. He was awarded many academic honours and prizes, was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1982 was made a Companion of Honour.

Provenance: Spink, November 2006

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