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Curated playlist

German philosophers of art

  • 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.
  • Martin HeideggerPhilosopher Martin Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in May 1933. He did so while admired as a leading thinker of being.
  • Friedrich SchillerFriedrich Schiller's tomb is now empty. On the 3rd of May 2008, DNA tests showed the skull in it was not his.
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelHegel watched Napoleon ride out of Jena the day before the 1806 battle. The philosopher called him "this world-soul."
  • 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…
  • Walter BenjaminWalter Benjamin reached the Catalan border town of Portbou on the 25th of September 1940, a German-Jewish philosopher and critic with almost nothing published that the wider world had noticed. He had crossed the French-Spanish frontier…
  • Theodor W. AdornoTheodor W. Adorno opened his first lecture of the summer semester in 1969 by inviting students to ask questions whenever they arose. A student wrote on the blackboard: "If Adorno is left in peace, capitalism will never cease." Three women…
  • 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…
  • Erwin PanofskyIn 1934, Erwin Panofsky argued a famous Flemish painting was really a legal contract.

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