Curated playlist
German Roman Catholics
- Nicolaus CopernicusMathematician and astronomer (1473–1543)
- Ludwig van BeethovenLudwig van Beethoven could no longer hear the applause his own music had earned. At the premiere on the 7th of May 1824, the contralto Caroline Unger had to turn him around so he could see the audience cheering behind his back. He had…
- Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart was four years old when his father began teaching him minuets at the clavier, treating it as a game. The boy played them faultlessly, in perfect time, with delicacy. By five he was composing little pieces and…
- Wolfgang OverathWolfgang Overath spent his entire professional career at 1. FC Köln between 1962 and 1977. He appeared in 765 matches for the club during that fifteen-year span. The player scored 287 goals while playing as an attacking midfielder. This…
- Helmut KohlHelmut Josef Michael Kohl governed Germany for sixteen years, the longest chancellorship in the country's post-war history. He was described by two American presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, as "the greatest European leader…
- Francis II, Holy Roman EmperorOn the 6th of August 1806, a Habsburg monarch signed away a thousand years of European tradition. Francis II declared the bond tying him to the states of the Empire dissolved, and with that sentence the Holy Roman Empire of the German…
- Anna Maria MozartAnna Maria Walburga Mozart was born on Christmas Day, 1720, in the small town of St. Gilgen in the Archbishopric of Salzburg. She would go on to raise one of the most celebrated composers in history, yet her own life was shaped by hardship…
- Maximilian III JosephMaximilian III Joseph, the Elector of Bavaria, died on the 30th of December 1777 without a single heir to his name. But what made his final weeks so memorable was not the politics that followed. It was a clock. Riding through Munich in…
- Jacques OffenbachJacques Offenbach died on the 5th of October 1880, just months before the premiere of the opera he had spent years trying to finish. He was heard saying to his dog, Kleinzach, "I would give everything I have to be at the premiere." He…
- Konrad AdenauerKonrad Adenauer was elected the first chancellor of West Germany on the 15th of September 1949 by what observers called a majority of one vote, his own. He was 73 years old. Most assumed he would be a caretaker. Instead he held the office…
- Johannes GutenbergIn 1455, Johannes Gutenberg completed a Bible with 42 lines on each page, and about 180 copies came off his press in Mainz. Three quarters were printed on paper, the rest on vellum. A single copy sold for 30 florins, roughly three years'…
- Erwin RommelErwin Rommel rode into Tripoli on the 12th of February 1941 as commander of a freshly created desert force, the Afrika Korps, with orders to hold a defensive line. He ignored them within weeks. By the time the war in North Africa ended, he…
- Leopold MozartLeopold Mozart spent the better part of his adult life in the shadow of a son he helped create. Born in Augsburg on the 14th of November 1719, he grew into a skilled violinist, theorist, and composer who published a violin textbook admired…
- Manuel NeuerManuel Neuer made his Bundesliga debut with Schalke 04 on matchday two of the 2006, 07 season. He came on as a substitute for the injured Frank Rost during a 2, 2 draw against Bayern Munich. The twenty-year-old eventually secured the…
- Miroslav KloseMiroslav Klose scored 16 goals in the FIFA World Cup across four tournaments, a record no player has matched. He was born on the 9th of June 1978 in Opole, a Silesian city in Poland, and he arrived in West Germany as an eight-year-old in…
- Albrecht DürerAlbrecht Dürer was born in Nuremberg on the 21st of May 1471, the third child of a Hungarian goldsmith who had translated his own family name from the word for "doormaker". That family name, Dürer, carries a door in its coat of arms. By…
- Constanze MozartConstanze Mozart outlived her famous husband by more than fifty years, dying on the 6th of March 1842 at the age of eighty. For much of the twentieth century, that long life was treated as little more than a footnote to someone else's…
- Otto von HabsburgOtto von Habsburg was born on the 20th of November 1912 at Villa Wartholz in Reichenau an der Rax, at a moment when Austria-Hungary still stood as one of the great empires of Europe. His full baptismal name ran to twenty-two words: Franz…
- 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 the grandson of a weaver. Half a century later, he would be murdered in a hotel…
- Ferdinand von Hompesch zu BolheimFerdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim became the 71st Grand Master of the Knights of Malta in 1797, and within a year he had presided over one of the most humiliating surrenders in the Order's long history. A military force that had held Malta…
- Johann Christian BachJohann Christian Bach was born on the 5th of September 1735 in Leipzig, Germany, the youngest son of one of the most towering figures in Western music. His father, Johann Sebastian, personally guided his early musical training. By the time…
- Franz BeckenbauerFranz Beckenbauer lifted the World Cup trophy as a captain in 1974, then lifted it again as a manager in 1990. Only two other men in football history, Brazil's Mario Zagallo and France's Didier Deschamps, have ever done the same. The fans…