Curated playlist
Leipzig University alumni
- Friedrich NietzscheOn the 3rd of January 1889, in the streets of Turin, Friedrich Nietzsche caused a public disturbance and two policemen approached him. An often-repeated tale holds that he had watched a horse being flogged across the Piazza Carlo Alberto,…
- Richard WagnerRichard Wagner was born on the 22nd of May 1813 in Leipzig, in the Jewish quarter of the city, at a house known as the House of the Red and White Lions. His father died of typhoid fever just six months after his birth. His mother then…
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheOn the 13th of October 1806, Napoleon's army poured into Weimar, and the least disciplined of the French soldiers, the so-called spoon guards, broke into the home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They drank his wine, made a great uproar, and…
- Robert SchumannRobert Schumann was born on the 8th of June 1810 in Zwickau, in the Kingdom of Saxony, into a family of booksellers and translators with no particular musical connections. His father August made his fortune selling German translations of…
- Christian Gottlob HeyneChristian Gottlob Heyne was born on the 25th of September 1729 in Chemnitz, Saxony, the son of a poor weaver who had fled Silesia to preserve his Protestant faith. That origin story, poverty undercut by principle, tracks almost every…
- Émile DurkheimÉmile Durkheim was born on the 15th of April 1858 in Épinal, Lorraine, France, the son of a rabbi and the grandson of a rabbi, and the great-grandson of one too. His family's rabbinical lineage stretched back eight generations. Nobody…
- 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. He would go on to found phenomenology, one of the most far-reaching philosophical…
- Edward TellerEdward Teller watched the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945 while almost everyone else lay face-down on the ground with their backs turned. He stood and looked. He later described the flash as being like pulling open the curtain in a dark…
- Tycho BraheTycho Brahe was born on the 14th of December 1546, into one of Denmark's most powerful noble families, and he died having mapped the sky more precisely than any human before him. On the night of the 11th of November 1572, he stepped…
- Otto JahnOtto Jahn was born in Kiel on the 16th of June 1813, into a world where the boundary between classical scholarship and musical biography had barely been tested. By the time he died in Göttingen on the 9th of September 1869, he had helped…