Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) | The most prominent in an amazing series of musical Bachs spanning the 16th to the 19th centuries. J.S. Bach’s career began in earnest when he became court organist at Weimar in 1708. By 1714 he had been appointed Konzertmeister. He went on to compose musical monuments like the “Brandenburg Concertos,” the “Pastoral Symphony,” and “The Well-Tempered Clavier.”
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) | Born in tiny Bonn, he moved to Vienna, the musical capital of Europe, at the age of 22. Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” became the official anthem of the European Community in 1986, and the unofficial anthem of German unification in 1989. Beethoven’s grand symphonies, chamber music, and other classical works now also belong to the entire world.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) | Began his musical career at the age of four. His musical creations in opera, chamber music, symphonies, and piano concertos are considered by many to be some of the most superb of all time. Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria but spent most of his working life in Vienna. (Link for Mozart)
Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) | Came from Nürnberg and held important musical positions as an organist-composer there and in several other German cities as well as in Vienna, Austria. His works include suites, cantatas, and various chorale works. His "Canon" is a popular classical work to this day.
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) | Revolutionized classical music with his "Tristan und Isolde." His tremendous influence on opera came from popular works such as his "Ring Cycle" and the "Meistersinger von Nürnberg." Wagner built his famous music hall in Bayreuth, now the home of the annual Richard Wagner Festival (Festspiele). Fortunately, Wagner's music transcends his dark side as an anti-Semite and a philanderer. His life was also intertwined with that of "Mad King Ludwig" of Bavaria, who supported Wagner financially for a time.
Georg Friedrich Handel (1685–1759)
Johannes Brahms (1833–97)
Richard Strauss (1864–1949)
Walter Gropius (1883-1969) | Founded the famous German Bauhaus school of architecture and design in 1919. He came to America after the Nazis came to power, taught at Harvard, and designed buildings such as the Pan Am building in New York City.
Peter Behrens (1868-1940) | Became famous as the chief designer and architect for Germany's AEG electrical concern between 1909 and 1912. Behrens proved that industrial plants could also be eye-pleasing architectural works. He influenced the later work of Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier, all of whom worked under Behrens.
Helmut Jahn (1940- ) | German-American architect with offices in Chicago, Frankfurt, and Munich. Born Jan. 4, 1940 in Nuremberg, Germany, Jahn studied architecture in Munich and at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 1981 he became a principal in the architectural firm of Murphy/Jahn. In 1991 Jahn was chosen as one of the Ten Most Influential Living American Architects. In addition to teaching, Jahn has designed the following notable projects: Messeturm (trade fair tower), Frankfurt; State of Illinois Center, Chicago; United Airlines Terminal, O'Hare Airport, Chicago; The Tower, 10940 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles; Kempinski Airport Hotel, Munich.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) | Born in Aachen, Germany. Known for his trend-setting architecture and the phrase "less is more," van der Rohe was associated with the Bauhaus and later headed the school that became the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He designed classic skyscrapers like New York's Seagram building (1958), which pioneered the use of open space around such mid-city structures.
Karl Baedeker (1801-1859) | Father of the travel guide (Reiseführer). The first Baedeker guide, Rheinlande, was published in 1839 in Koblenz. That first book established the Baedeker's reputation for accuracy and detail. Karl Baedeker was born into a publishing family in Essen. The eldest son of Gottschalk Diederich Baedeker, whose father Zacharias (1750-1800) had established the Baedeker publishing house in 1775, Karl Baedeker continued his family’s publishing tradition in Essen. After his death the Baedekers moved their travel publishing to Leipzig. After WWII, the Baedeker headquarters relocated to Freiburg in southwest Germany.
Wernher von Braun (1912-1977) | Born in Wirsitz in eastern Germany (now Poland) and worked at Peenemünde developing the V2 rockets that struck at Britain in 1944-45. One of the first true “rocket scientists,” he and about 120 other German scientists were brought to the U.S. to work on rocket systems. The U.S. space program was greatly speeded up by their work, culminating in the Saturn V rocket that sent Americans to the moon on the Apollo mission in 1969, when von Braun was the head of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Adolf (Adi) Dassler (1900-1959) | In 1924 Adi and his brother Rudolph (Rudi) founded the German sports shoe company Gebrüder Dassler OHG—now known as adidas (pron. AH-dee-DAHS, not ah-DEE-duhs). Born the son of a cobbler in Herzogenaurauch, Germany, Adi invented spiked shoes for track and field in 1920. Jesse Owens was wearing a pair of Dassler’s shoes when he won gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The brothers split in 1948 when Rudi founded Puma (one of adidas’ biggest competitors in Europe) and Adi renamed his firm by combining elements of his name. In the 1970s, adidas was the top athletic shoe brand in the US. Today it has about eight percent of the sports shoe market.
Marlene Dietrich (December 27, 1901 – May 6, 1992) | was a German-born American actress, singer and entertainer. She is considered to be the first German actress to flourish in Hollywood. Dietrich had a contralto singing range.
Erik H. Erikson (1902-1994) | Grew up in Karlsruhe as Erik Homburger but changed his name to Erikson before coming to the United States. Erikson was a disciple of Freud, but disagreed with the Freudian philosophy that early childhood and sex mainly determined a person’s identity. Erikson, a psychoanalyst, author, and professor (Yale, Harvard, Berkeley), coined the term “identity crisis” and wrote several “psychobiographies” on figures such as Darwin, Einstein (above), Gandhi, and Jesus. He never obtained a college degree.
Max Ernst (1891-1976) | The German surrealist artist was born in Cologne. At the nearby University of Bonn he studied philosophy and psychology, but after meeting various “Blue Rider” artists there, he turned to art. In 1920, along with Hans Arp, Ernst set up the Dada group in Cologne. He later moved to Paris, where his word-image “picture poem” paintings and collages set him apart from most artists of the time. During World War I, after being imprisoned as an enemy alien, Ernst went to the United States (1941-1952). In the early 1950s he went back to France, set up a studio in Paris, and became a French citizen.
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (June 12, 1929–early March 1945) was a Jewish girl born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar Germany. She gained international fame posthumously following the publication of her diary which documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) | The Austrian inventor of psychoanalysis. http://www.german-way.com/freud.html
Johannes Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg (ca. 1397-1468) | Working in Mainz, he started printing the Bible in Latin in 1450. It took five years for Gutenberg and his assistants to produce just 200 copies. Today his 42-line Bible is the most valuable book in the world, but Gutenberg lost money on the deal. Only 48 Gutenberg Bibles are known to still exist. Gutenberg revolutionized the world with his printing press using metal moveable type.
Gunther von Hagens (Gunther Liebchen, 1945- ) German anatomist and artist whose international “Body Worlds” (Körperwelten) exhibits have stirred up controversy (in Los Angeles at the California Science Center until Jan. 23, 2005). Von Hagens was born in Poland, but his family moved to East Germany at the end of WWII. From 1965 to 1968 he studied medicine at the university in Jena, but he was arrested for protesting the Russian (Warsaw Pact) invasion of Czechoslovakia and his failed attempt to escape to West Germany. After West Germany paid to free von Hagens and other political prisoners in 1970 he continued his medical studies in Lübeck. In 1993 von Hagens founded the Institut für Plastination in Heidelberg. He holds several patents for the “plastination” process he uses to preserve human and animal cadavers in clear plastic. Today von Hagens lives primarily in China, where he has been a guest professor at the medical university in Dalian since 1996. See the Body Worlds Web site (in English and German) for more about his controversial art exhibits featuring real human bodies.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) | German naturalist and explorer who traveled in the Americas, meeting President Jefferson in 1804 during a brief visit to the United States. His extensive work researching everything from magnetism to ocean currents made him one of the first environmental scientists. The Humboldt Current west of South America is named for him, as are the Mare Humboldtianum and the Humboldt Crater on the moon, and various counties, communities, mountain ranges, and a river in the U.S. state of Nevada. His older brother, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) was a distinguished linguist, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University in Berlin.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) | Swiss psychologist, psychiatrist and inventor of analytical psychology. Born near Basel, Jung was at one time an important collaborator with Sigmund Freud, but he broke with Freud in 1912 in a disagreement over the causes of certain psychological disorders. Jung also placed heavy emphasis on the psychological meaning of dreams.
Henry A. Kissinger (1923- ) | Born in Fürth, Germany, Kissinger came to the US at the age of 15. After graduating from Harvard, he went on to become Nixon's Secretary of State in 1973. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in that same year for his Vietnam war negotiations. (See Years of Renewal, Henry Kissinger's latest installment of his memoirs.)
Karl Lagerfeld (1938- ) | Noted German fashion designer Lagerfeld is originally from Hamburg, but he now lives and works primarily in Paris and other world fashion capitals.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) | German philosopher and mathematician born in Leipzig. Leibniz, later recognized as a vital pioneer in developing a philosophy of pure logic based on mathematical concepts, died virtually forgotten in Hannover.
Martin Luther (1483-1546) | Started the Protestant Reformation by nailing his "Ninety-Five Theses" to the church door in Wittenberg. At his heresy trial in Worms he defiantly declared, "Hier stehe ich." ("Here I stand.") Luther also had an impact on standardizing the German language through his translation of the Bible into German. - Links for Martin Luther
Thomas Mann (1875-1955) | Buddenbrooks (1900), Death in Venice (1912), The Magic Mountain (1924), and Felix Krull (1954) are the most famous works of this Nobel Prize-winning writer (1929). His older brother Heinrich Mann (1871-1950) was also a noted novelist and writer (Professor Unrat, 1905 - the basis for the famous film, The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich). Both brothers spent the years after 1933 living in exile, most of that time in Santa Monica, California.
Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854-1899) | Invented the famous Linotype typesetting machine, first used in 1886 for the New York Tribune. His invention required ten years of hard work and revolutionized the printing of books and newspapers. Mergenthaler was born in Hachtel, Germany. He died in Baltimore, Maryland.
Thomas Nast (1840-1902) | Born in Landau, Germany, Nast later went to America and became the creator of the Democratic and Republican party mascots and the “American” image of Santa Claus. He is famous for his biting political cartoons.
Helmut Newton - born October 31, 1920, Berlin, Germany – January 23, 2004, West Hollywood, California, USA) was a German-Australian fashion photographer noted for his nude studies of women.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) | The German philosopher and writer, born in Saxony in eastern Germany, became famous for his Übermensch (superman) and the wisdom of his Zarathustra. His philosophy, expounded in works like Die Geburt der Tragödie (The Birth of Tragedy, 1872), Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883), and Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power, 1888), was falsely adopted by the Nazis (aided by Nietzsche's sister), but only by corrupting and editing Nietzsche's true ideas, which rejected anti-Semitism, as well as German nationalistic and racist tendencies. Nietzsche suffered from physical and mental illness in his last years. See: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1481
Paul Julius Baron von Reuter (Israel Beer Josaphat, 1816-1899) | Founded a news agency in Aachen, Germany and Verviers, Belgium in 1849, using carrier pigeons to dispatch the news that arrived by telegraph in the two cities. Two years later Reuter moved to London and established the Reuters Telegrams news agency. Today Reuters is one of the largest international news and press agencies. Born in Kassel, Reuter adopted his new name in 1844, later became a British citizen, and received the title of baron in 1871
John (Johann) August Roebling (1806-1869) | Designed and supervised the building of the Brooklyn Bridge (opened in 1883). Washington Roebling finished the project following his father's death) and other spans using his "wire rope" suspension system. Educated in Berlin, J.A. Roebling came to the U.S. from Thuringia in 1831. His company later supplied cable for the Golden Gate and other modern suspension bridges.
Mayer Anselm Rothschild (1743-1812) | Founder of the famous House of Rothschild and its European banking empire. (See Money and banking.) His five sons later helped spread the Rothschild ("red shield") name beyond Frankfurt to London, Naples, Paris, and Vienna. All of the sons were made barons by Austria in 1812, receiving the right to use the noble "von" in front of their names. Later Rothschilds were involved in establishing a Jewish homeland.
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976) | One of the leading masters of German Expressionism and a member of the artistic school known as Die Brücke ("The Bridge"). His favored medium was the woodcut. Born near Chemnitz, Schmidt-Rottluff was made an honorary citizen of Berlin in 1970 and he died there six years later. - For more about Schmidt-Rottluff and his art see the Schmidt-Rottluff bio at DHM (in German).
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) | Second only to Goethe, one of Germany's greatest dramatists and poets. Schiller was forced by Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg to study law and medicine for eight years. It comes as no surprise then to discover the theme of rebellion and protest in many of Schiller's works. His dramas include Die Räuber (1781), Kabale und Liebe (1784), Don Carlos (1787), Wallenstein (1800, considered his greatest drama and translated into English by Coleridge), and Wilhelm Tell (1804). Also see Schiller links below.
Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher best known for his gloomy and questioning manner.
Carl Schurz (1829-1906) | Born near Cologne, Germany, fled to America by way of England from the German revolution of 1848. Schurz was a Union general in the Civil War, became a U.S. Senator (R, Missouri, 1869-1875), Secretary of the Interior in the Rutherford B. Hayes administration, and confidant of Abraham Lincoln (for whom he campaigned). He also edited several newspapers and wrote two biographies. As interior secretary, Schurz promoted civil service reform and was sympathetic to the American Indians. The small reservation town of Schurz, Nevada honors his name.
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) | Generous doctor to the natives in Lambarene, French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon), where he lived from 1913 until his death there in 1965. He established a hospital for the natives in Lambarene and worked tirelessly to improve the living conditions there. Schweitzer was also an accomplished musician (notably on the organ) and theologian/philosopher who wrote several books on religious, humanitarian themes, as well as a classic work on J.S. Bach. During his time in Africa, Schweitzer often traveled abroad to lecture and give organ recitals. His 1931 autobiography is entitled Aus meinem Leben und Denken (My Life and Thought). In 1952 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Schweitzer was born in Kaysersberg in German Alsace, now in France.
Alexander Spoerl (1917-1978) | That rarity in German literature, a master of witty, ironic humor. One of his classic works, the semi-autobiographical Memoiren eines mittelmässigen Schülers (Memoirs of a Mediocre Student, 1950), pokes fun at what might seem to be an unfunny subject, describing in hilarious detail what it was like growing up in Germany just as the Nazis were coming to power. In addition to other humorous novels, Spoerl wrote entertaining manuals on coping with everyday equipment and tools in Mit dem Auto auf du (On Familiar Terms with the Car) and Mit der Kamera auf du (On Familiar Terms with the Camera). His father, Heinrich Spoerl (1887-1955), was also a humorist, whose best known novel, Die Feuerzangenbowle (1933), was made into a movie with Heinz Rühmann.
Levi Strauss (1829 - 1902) Inventor of Jeans
Gerhard Thiele | German astronaut and scientist who has participated in NASA missions. One of nine Germans who have been to space.
Katarina Witt (born December 3, 1965) is a German figure skater, in Germany she was commonly affectionately called "Kati" in the past, but today her full name is used more often. She won two Olympic gold medals for East Germany, first in the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics and the second in 1988 at the Calgary Olympics. She won the World Championships in 1984, 1985, 1987, and 1988, and six consecutive European Championships (1983–1988). Her competitive record makes her one of the most successful figure skaters of all time.
Boris Franz Becker (born November 22, 1967, in Leimen, West Germany) is a former World No. 1 professional tennis player from Germany. He is a six-time Grand Slam singles champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and the youngest-ever winner of the men's singles title at Wimbledon at the age of 17.