Curated playlist
19th-century German philosophers
- Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche's sister edited his writings to fit her own ultranationalist views.
- Immanuel KantA Prussian king's censors forbade Immanuel Kant to speak publicly about religion. The philosopher answered in 1798.
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheWhen French soldiers broke into Goethe's home in 1806, his companion Christiane Vulpius defended it.
- Friedrich SchillerFriedrich Schiller's tomb is now empty. On the 3rd of May 2008, DNA tests showed the skull in it was not his.
- Karl MarxKarl Marx left an estate valued at just 250 pounds when he died in 1883. He died stateless in London at 64.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelHegel watched Napoleon ride out of Jena the day before the 1806 battle. The philosopher called him "this world-soul."
- Friedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels rode with an aristocratic fox hunt while funding Karl Marx.
- Arthur SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher who, in 1820, asked the University of Berlin to schedule his lectures for the very hour when Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel taught. Hegel was the celebrated name of the day. Only five students…
- Edmund HusserlA Franciscan priest smuggled approximately 40,000 pages of Edmund Husserl's notes out of Nazi Germany.
- Max WeberMax Weber died in 1920 with his major book unfinished on his desk. His widow spent two years preparing it.
- Georg SimmelMax Weber and Edmund Husserl backed Georg Simmel, yet he got no full professor's chair until age 56.
- Karl KautskyLenin once called Karl Kautsky's book the "New Testament" of Marxism. Later, Lenin branded him a renegade.
- Rosa LuxemburgRosa Luxemburg was killed in 1919 under a socialist government.
- Max StirnerMax Stirner was born Johann Caspar Schmidt, and the name history remembers began as a joke about the size of his forehead. He later adopted that nickname as his pen name, and it outlasted the man himself. Almost everything we know about…