Welcome to the website of Franktof F. Burnsteins, one of the twentieth century’s most unorthodox and eclectic European intellectuals.
Franktof F. Burnsteins was an epistemologist, zoologist, sociologist, illustrator, poet, inventor and collector of antiquities. He was also a passionate socialist and a committed vegetarian.
Ignored and ridiculed by the majority of his contemporaries, Burnsteins’ work started to obtain some recognition after his death. Opinions over his role in the history of contemporary thought are still split though. Some pay tribute to his originality and multidisciplinary approach, valuing his innovative research on the ambiguous nature of truth. Others depict him as a useless egomaniac producing theories that in today’s world may seem bizarre. There has been criticism of the fragmentary and inconclusive nature of his work, the style of his prose and the over-reliance on the visual in his publications. One certainty is that Burnsteins was a brilliant mind afflicted by low concentration and by a restless, almost counterproductive, imagination. As Yeats said: “Wisdom is a butterfly and not a gloomy bird of prey”.