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Curated category

German male non-fiction writers

  • Albert EinsteinWhen Albert Einstein was five and sick in bed, his father brought him a compass. The trembling needle, always pointing the same way, convinced the boy that…
  • Karl Joseph SimrockKarl Joseph Simrock was born on the 28th of August 1802 in Bonn. His father worked as a music publisher there. The young Karl studied law at the University…
  • Friedrich SchillerFriedrich Schiller was born on the 10th of November 1759 in Marbach, in the Duchy of Württemberg, named after King Frederick the Great but called Fritz by…
  • Lambert SchmithausenLambert Schmithausen entered the world on the 17th of November 1939 in Cologne, Germany. This date marked the beginning of a life that would eventually…
  • Christoph Martin WielandChristoph Martin Wieland was born on the 5th of September 1733 in Oberholzheim, a village split between two jurisdictions: half belonging to the Free…
  • Philipp LahmPhilipp Lahm scored in the sixth minute of the 2006 FIFA World Cup's opening match, cutting inside the area and launching a right-foot shot into the…
  • Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap was born on the 18th of May 1891 in Ronsdorf, in what is now the city of Wuppertal, Germany. At the age of 14, he taught himself Esperanto and…
  • Martin LutherMartin Luther stood before the Diet of Worms on the 17th of April 1521, a German priest summoned to answer for his own books. The Emperor Charles V presided.
  • Hermann OldenbergHermann Oldenberg was born in Hamburg on the 31st of October 1854, and by the time he died in Göttingen in March 1920, he had left a body of scholarly work…
  • Jacob GrimmJacob Ludwig Karl Grimm was born on the 4th of January 1785, in Hanau in Hesse-Kassel, and he spent nearly eight decades building what may be the most…
  • Edmund HusserlEdmund Husserl was born on the 8th of April 1859 in Proßnitz, a small town in the Margraviate of Moravia, the second of four children of a Jewish milliner.
  • Paul TillichPaul Tillich arrived in the United States in 1933 at age 47, without fluent English, his university post stripped by the Nazi regime, his first marriage long…
  • Rudolf BultmannRudolf Karl Bultmann was born on the 20th of August 1884 in Wiefelstede, Oldenburg. His father Arthur Kennedy Bultmann served as a Lutheran minister.
  • Willy BrandtWilly Brandt was born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm on the 18th of December 1913 in the Free City of Lübeck, the illegitimate son of a single mother who worked as…
  • Carl von ClausewitzCarl von Clausewitz was born on the 1st of July 1780 in Burg bei Magdeburg, in the Prussian Duchy of Magdeburg. He died on the 16th of November 1831 of…
  • Marcus JunkelmannMarcus Junkelmann entered the world on the 2nd of October 1949 in Munich. His family soon relocated to Schleißheim and took up residence within the Lustheim…
  • Walter BurkertWalter Burkert was born on the 2nd of February 1931 in Neuendettelsau, Germany, and over the course of a long career he changed how the modern world thinks…
  • Jan AssmannJohann Christoph Assmann, known as Jan, was born on the 7th of July 1938 in Germany. He studied Egyptology and classical archaeology across four cities…
  • Theodor MommsenTheodor Mommsen stood up at a formal banquet at the University of Berlin in 1892, and the entire room rose with him. Mark Twain was there, seated at the head…
  • Barthold Georg NiebuhrBarthold Georg Niebuhr was born in Copenhagen on the 27th of August 1776, the son of Carsten Niebuhr, a prominent German geographer.
  • Johann Joachim WinckelmannJohann Joachim Winckelmann was born on the 9th of December 1717 into poverty in Stendal, a town in the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the son of a cobbler and…
  • Erwin PanofskyErwin Panofsky looked at a fifteenth-century Flemish painting of a man and a woman in a dim room and saw something no one else had seen: a legal contract.
  • Timothy ReuterTimothy Alan Reuter entered the world on the 25th of January 1947 in Manchester. His family background included a grandfather who served as mayor of Berlin…