Cassirer, Ernst: - ERNST CASSIRER (1874-1945) was a philosopher and historian of philosophy. He taught at Friedrich Wilhelm University and the University of Hamburg, where he was Leo Strauss's dissertation advisor, before fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933. In exile, he lectured at Oxford, Sweden's Gothenburg University, Yale, and Columbia. His better-known works include the three-volume Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and The Myth of the State.