Clemens was born in
Koblenz. After spending some time in an educational institution in
Metz, he entered, at the age of sixteen, the Jesuit College of
Fribourg, Switzerland, attended the Gymnasium at Koblenz, and thence passed to the
University of Bonn. In 1835 he matriculated at the
University of Berlin, where he devoted special attention to the study of philosophy and received the doctorate in philosophy in 1839 with a dissertation titled
De philosophia Anaxagorae Clazomenii (
On the Philosophy of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae). At the end of a literary journey through Germany and Italy, he became, in 1843, instructor in philosophy at the University of Bonn, and taught there until 1856. In 1848 he was elected a member of the
Frankfurt Parliament, and attended, at
Mainz, the first
Congress of the German Catholics, at which he suggested the foundation of the
St. Vincent de Paul Society in Germany. In 1856 he was appointed professor of philosophy in the Academy of Münster. So great was his popularity as a teacher at Bonn that, when he removed to the
University of Münster, he was followed by some seventy students. The attendance at his lectures in the
Westphalian capital was an extraordinarily large one; but his health failed after a few years. In 1861, upon the advice of his physicians, he sought relief in a southern climate; he died in Rome at the beginning of the following year and was buried at the Gesù. ==Works==