Schahan Berberian

Schahan R. Berberian (; 1 January 1891 – 9 October 1956) was an Armenian philosopher, composer, and psychologist. Biography Early years Berberian was born in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). Shortly thereafter, along with his parents Retheos and Zaruhi and his elder brother Onnig, Berberian moved to Geneva, Switzerland to escape the atrocities against the Armenians perpetrated by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II from 1894 to 1896. Returning to Constantinople, Berberian enrolled at the Berberian School, which had been founded by his father Reteos Berberian, in Kadıköy, a district on the Asian side of the city. At that time, he started taking private lessons on the violin, but soon quit playing the “insufferable instrument” (allegedly throwing it into the fireplace to burn it). Instead he took up piano lessons although this venture was also rather unsuccessful. Berberian graduated in 1906. The first job of the fifteen-year-old young man was to teach literature and natural sciences at his alma mater but in 1908, he left for Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France, taking classes in philosophy and metaphysics with Henri Bergson, psychology with Georges D