Kurt Schaefer was a whole man, a conscious member of the human race, a scientist, and an intellectual who remembered his humanist commitment.Fred K. Schaefer was born in Berlin, Germany in the family of metal worker.
[2] He was involved in politics as a member of Social Democratic party and after the rise of fascism he fled from Nazi Germany.
He is well known for his article in flagship American periodical, Annals, Association of American Geographers called Exceptionalism in geography: A Methodological Examination[4] It was both a repudiation of Richard Hartshorne's position in United States, and a call for a scientific approach to geography based upon the search for geographical laws (the ultimate form of a scientific generalization).
Schaefer died before his article even appeared in print, and so he was never able to elaborate his argument, nor defend himself from Hartshorne's subsequent critique.
They include at least two unpublished manuscripts by Schaefer, “Political Geography,” and “The Nature of Geography.”.