Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/90

 BEANDES

BKAY

defeated the Government, which tried to unseat him, and won the right to affirm. Although an avowed Materialist, he became Minister of Finance in 1909, and has again held that position since 1913.

BRAN DBS, Georg, LL.D., Danish literary and dramatic critic. B. (Copen hagen) Feb. 4, 1842. Ed. Copenhagen University (gold medal). Except for a few years (1872-77) when he was teaching at Copenhagen University, Dr. Brandes passed from one European capital to another, between 1866 and 1877, when he settled in Berlin. Since that time he has again travelled extensively in Eussia, Spain, Greece, Egypt, England, and America, acquiring an incomparable mastery of international life and letters. He trans lated J. S. Mill into Danish, and he wrote a vigorous defence of Ferrer. Of his thirty works, the chief is Main Currents of the Literature of the Nineteenth Century (6 vols., Eng. trans., 1901-1905). He owes his degree to St. Andrews University ; and he is an Honorary Associate of the Eationalist Press Association and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Eoyal Society of Literature. Like his brother Edvard, he is an outspoken Agnostic and zealous propagandist.

BRANDIN, Professor Louis Maurice,

L. es L., Ph.D., French philologist. B. Mar. 18, 1874. Ed. Paris and Greifswald. Dr. Brandin is Fielden Professor of French and of Eomance Philology in the London University, though he transferred his services to the French army for the dura tion of the War. He has written a Hebrew -French Glossary of the XII Cen tury (1906) and other works, and is an Officer of Public Instruction and Laureate of the Institute (Prix Chavee). He rejects all creeds (personal knowledge).

BRANTING, Karl Hjalmar, Swedish Socialist leader. B. Nov. 23, 1860. Ed. gymnasium Stockholm and Upsala Uni versity. In 1884 Branting began to con- 107

tribute to the Social Democratic Tiden and take an active part in advanced movements. He afterwards edited the Tiden and, later, the Social Democraten, an article in which brought upon him a sentence of three months imprisonment for blasphemy. He is an outspoken Eationalist and a strong opponent of militarism, as he proves in his various works. Since 1896 he has been the leader of the Swedish Social Democrats, and he is pre-eminent among Labour leaders for his high sense of responsibility and his intellectual ability.

BRAUN, Eugen. See GHILLANY, F. W.

BRAUN, Lily, German writer and reformer. B. July 2, 1865, daughter of General von Kretschman. Ed. privately. She first married Prof. Georg von Gizycki (SEE) and worked with him in the Ethical- Eationalist Movement at Berlin. Later she became one of the leaders of the Ger man feminists and a prominent Socialist. Her aunt, the Countess Clotilde von Hermann, disinherited her on account of her advanced ideas. Her attitude towards. Christianity was disdainful and Nietzschean (see her Mcmoiren einer Sozialisten, 2 vols., 1900). D. Aug. 9, 1916.

BRAUN, Wilhelm von, Swedish poet. B. Nov. 8, 1813. He served in the army in his earlier years, but quitted it in 1846 for letters. His poetry, which won for him considerable repute in Sweden, is frequently of a satirical chai acter, and in some of the earlier poems he exercises his faculty on the Bible. His collected works fill six volumes (1875-76). D. Sep. 12, 1860.

BRAY, Charles, philosophical writer, B. Jan. 31, 1811. A Coventry manufac turer, Bray fell under the influence of Combe and Owen, and devoted his means largely to philanthropy and social work. In his chief publication, The Philosophy of Necessity (1841), he accepts Pantheism (p. 318) and denies personal immortality 108