Having studied German literature, classics and other humanities courses at the universities of Berlin, Geneva and Freiburg, Singer obtained his PhD in political science from the University of Strassburg. He was Associate Professor at the School of Economics at the University of Hamburg between 1925 and 1933, then Guest Professor of Economic Theory at the Tokyo Imperial University until 1935. In Australia he taught economics at the University of Sydney in the 1940s, and at that time started writing in English. He is mainly known as the author of academic publications in the areas of political history, philosophy, and psychological studies of cultural characteristics and traditions, such as Die Motive der indischen Geldreform (1910), Das Geld als Zeichen (Jena: G. Fischer, 1920), Das Bild der kreisenden Drei (1938) and The Idea of Conflict, published by Melbourne University Press in 1949 (held at NLA). He spent the last years of his life in Greece and died in Athens in 1962.
In the 1920s Singer was a member of the famous German 'George-Kreis' (named after the German poet Stefan George, 1868-1933) and, like his fellow member and writer Karl Wolfskehl, of Jewish background. Persecuted by the Nazis, both had to cross many countries until they finally found a safe haven in the - for them - remotest part of the world: Singer in Australia, and Wolfskehl in New Zealand. Wolfskehl eventually died in New Zealand in 1948, the Australian government having rejected his application for a resident's visa permit, during his voyage via Sydney in 1939, on two grounds: his advanced age and the insufficient sum of money he could bring with him. In the 1940s Meanjin published some of Wolfskehl's poems with translations and extensive biographical information by Kurt Singer (as well as other of Wolfskehl's poems and letters which are dealing with the suffering of the exiled and transplanted poet).
After his years lecturing at the University of Sydney, Singer went on travelling the world, and wrote a number of significant cultural works on various countries such as Japan, Italy, and Greece, where he had finally settled and lived until his death in Athens in 1962. All of his writings were highly regarded in scholarly circles of various disciplines, and were very influential. Some of his books have been republished even as recently as the twenty-first century, such as The Life of Ancient Japan (1939, republ. 2002 by Routledge). He also wrote Mirror, Sword and Jewel, written at the end of the Pacific war, posthumously published in in the 1970s (while Singer was teaching at the University of Sydney), and republ. in 1973 (London : Croom Helm, and New York : G. Braziller, [1973]) with a Foreword and biographical details on Singer by Richard Storry, and dedicated to the memory of his friend Karl Wolfskehl (repr. Tokyo and New York : Kodansha International, 1981, c1973). The book was republished again in a facsimile edition in Routledge's Japan Library (Routledge Curzon) (London: Japan Library and Tokyo: Japan Press, 1997), and reprinted in 2002, with Routledge's webpage describing the book thus: 'First published in the 1970s, this work offers an interpretation of the essence of Japanese society and individual psychology. It explores the mind and soul of the Japanese, and points to the hidden laws of Japanese life which have created the character of the country.'
(Sources: Kurt Singer, 'Poems by Karl Wolfskehl' (Meanjin 7.3 (1948): 184-186); Irmtraud Petersson, German Images in Australian Literature from the 1940s to the 1980s (1990); http://www.routledge.com)
