Curated playlist
German male non-fiction writers
- Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein once spent his days examining patents for gravel sorters.
- Karl Joseph SimrockKarl Simrock lost his government job for writing a poem praising a revolution.
- Friedrich SchillerFriedrich Schiller's tomb is now empty. On the 3rd of May 2008, DNA tests showed the skull in it was not his.
- Lambert SchmithausenScholar Lambert Schmithausen wrote whole studies on whether plants can suffer. He tackled it in Buddhist texts in 1991.
- Christoph Martin WielandGoethe attacked Christoph Martin Wieland in a satire, and Wieland recommended it.
- Philipp LahmPhilipp Lahm scored in the sixth minute of the 2006 World Cup's opening match. He was 22.
- Pope Benedict XVIPope Benedict XVI was born Joseph Alois Ratzinger on Holy Saturday, the 16th of April 1927, and was baptised the same day. For years as a cardinal, he said what he wanted most was a quiet life in his house in Pentling, a Bavarian village…
- Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap argued that most deep philosophical questions were meaningless.
- Martin LutherMartin Luther married a nun who had been smuggled out of her convent in herring barrels.
- Hermann OldenbergA German scholar's 1881 book on Buddhism has never gone out of print. Hermann Oldenberg drew only on Pāli texts.
- Jacob GrimmJacob Grimm and his brother expected their dictionary to take roughly ten years. It was finished in 1961.
- Edmund HusserlA Franciscan priest smuggled approximately 40,000 pages of Edmund Husserl's notes out of Nazi Germany.
- Paul TillichTheologian Paul Tillich argued that the God most people debate is not God at all.
- Rudolf BultmannRudolf Bultmann told students it hardly mattered what Jesus did in his life.
- Willy BrandtWilly Brandt, later West Germany's chancellor, fled Nazi Germany under a false name. He made it legal in 1948.
- Carl von ClausewitzCarl von Clausewitz died of cholera with his masterwork unfinished. His widow published On War the next year.
- Marcus JunkelmannMarcus Junkelmann marched over the Alps in Roman armor to test ancient sources.
- Walter BurkertWhy did the Greeks kill animals at the altar? Scholar Walter Burkert spent his life on that question.
- Jan AssmannEgyptologist Jan Assmann later admitted he no longer held his famous theory of monotheism in its original form.
- Theodor MommsenTheodor Mommsen insisted on checking every Latin inscription against the original stone.
- Barthold Georg NiebuhrHistorian Barthold Georg Niebuhr found a lost Roman law text in a Verona cathedral library.
- Johann Joachim WinckelmannJohann Joachim Winckelmann, a cobbler's son, became the father of art history.
- Erwin PanofskyIn 1934, Erwin Panofsky argued a famous Flemish painting was really a legal contract.
- Timothy ReuterHistorian Timothy Reuter translated a German scholar's book on the medieval church into English.