These are the essays from the students in German 3520. For the most part I have not edited them.

Jeremy Lintz
Germ 3520
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Breslau, Germany which today is Wroclaw, Poland. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was influenced early by the thinking of the young Karl Barth who urged a conformation to the form of Jesus as the suffering servant in a total commitment of the self to the lives of others. His ethical thinking led him to become an outspoken leader in the breakaway Confessing Church in Germany that openly declared its theological opposition to Nazism in the Barmen Declaration of 1934. Bonhoeffer traveled to London to help organize The Pastor’s Emergency League. While in England Bonhoeffer became close friends and a confidant of the influential Anglican Bishop, George Bell. After the Confessing Church was organized in May 1934 at Barmen, Germany Bonhoeffer returned from England in the spring of 1935 to assume leadership of the Confessing Church's seminary at Zingst by the Baltic Sea--a school relocated later that year to Finkenwalde in Pomerania. Out of the experiences at Finkenwalde emerged his two well-known books, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, as well as his lesser known writings on pastoral ministry such as Spiritual Care. His work to prepare pastors in the Confessing Church continued all the way to 1939. After the state cracked down on the church, Bonhoeffer continued his ministry underground and eventually became involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer's theological opposition to National Socialism made him a leader in the Confessing Church and an advocate on behalf of the Jews. His efforts to help a group of Jews escape to Switzerland were what first led to his arrest and imprisonment in the spring 1943. He was
Imprisoned for two years and hanged in a concentration camp in 1945 for his participation in a protestant resistance movement.
Bonehoeffer was known for his work in helping establish the Confessing Church and his literary works which include The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. Bonehoeffer was also known for his participation in the resistance against Hitler by helping Jews escape to Switzerland and in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Teaching Points
1. Bonhoeffer was vital in the resistance against the Nazis by helping Jews escape Germany and the in the plot to assassinate Hitler.
2. Bonhoeffer helped establish the Confessing Church.
3. Bonhoeffer also published literary works such The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together.
Works Cited
www.dbonhoeffer.org/
www.ushmm.org/bonhoeffer/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonehoeffer

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Trent Hudson

Friedrich Engels, 1820-1895
Friedrich Engels, the son of a textile-factory owner family, was born in 1820 in Barmen, Prussia. He was a German social scientist, journalist, and professional revolutionary, who became known for his long and close collaboration with Karl Marx, the founder of revolutionary Communism. Engels made important contributions to Marxist theory such as the introduction of Marx to the study of economics.
As a young man, his father sent him to England to help manage his cotton factory in Manchester. Shocked by the widespread poverty, he began writing an account which was published in 1845 as Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. In the same year, Engels began contributing to a journal called the Franco-German Annals, which was edited and published by Karl Marx in Paris. After their first meeting in person, they discovered that they both shared the same views on capitalism, and decided to work more closely together.
In 1847, Engels and Marx began writing a pamphlet together. It was based on Engels' The Principles of Communism. The 12,000-word pamphlet was finished in six weeks, written in such a manner as to make communism understandable to a wide audience. It was named The Communist Manifesto and was published in February 1848.
In order to help supply Marx with an income, Engels returned to work for his father in Manchester, before moving to London in 1870. In 1878 he published Herr Eugen Duhring’s Revolution in Science which was a popular presentation of Marxism and became the textbook for generations of Socialists and Communists.
After Marx's death in 1883, however, Engels devoted much of the rest of his life to editing and translating Marx's writings. He spent years editing and translating Marx’s manuscripts, and they finally became the second and third volumes of Das Kapital, an influential book in regard to the economics of socialism. Engels died in England in 1895.
1. Engels wrote the first draft of The Communist Manifesto and edited Marx’s notes for the second and third volumes of Das Kapital.
2. Herr Eugen Duhring’s Revolution in Science was highly influential among Socialists and Communists.
3. Engels Supported Marx financially and introduced him to the study of economics
Works Cited
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels
World Book Encyclopedia p. 283, copyright 2005

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Jakob Fugger II (the Rich)
Jakob’s father Hans and his older brothers Andreas and Jakob I started the Fugger dynasty; his father by twice marrying the daughters of the weaver’s guild and conducting a successful textile trade as a result, and his brothers by running the business Hans left behind. Both brothers had learned the goldsmith’s trade, and had a partnership until 1454. Andreas was more enterprising, but quickly went bankrupt through overexpansion and loss of a lawsuit. However, Jakob I had married the daughter of a mint master who went bankrupt three years later. Jakob I was made much more careful in his business due to this, and succeeded in increasing his profits substantially. In 1465 he died, leaving his business to two of his sons, Ulrich and Georg, who expanded the wealth and, with the help of their brother Markus in Rome, handled remittances for the sale of indulgences to the papal court of monies for the sale of indulgences and the procuring of church benefices. Ulrich and Georg established an agency of their own in the German merchant’s building in Venice, where their youngest brother, Jakob II the Rich, who had originally been destined for an ecclesiastical career, studied modern bookkeeping from 1478 on. Jakob II took control of Fugger agency in Innsbruck in 1485, where he showed sound business acumen in making the firm a partner in the Tirolean mines by granting permanent loans, secured by deliveries of copper and silver, to Archduke Sigismund and King (later emperor) Maximilian. The large profits realized from this venture encouraged the Fuggers to participate in mining in Silesia. There Jakob II, a shrewd and sober yet enterprising merchant, met a mining expert with who he leased the copper mines in Neusohl (modern Banska Bystrica, Slovakia) in 1495 eventually building them up into the greatest mining center of the time.
In 1494 the Fuggers established their first public company with a capital of 54,385 guilders, which doubled two years later when Jakob II persuaded the Prince Bishop of Brixen to join the company as a silent partner. Jakob’s aim was to establish a copper monopoly by opening foundries in Hohenkirchen and Fuggerau, (which was actually named after his family and is located in Austria) and by expanding the sales organization in Europe, especially, the Antwerp agency. True to his motto, “I want to gain while I can,” having no heir and unhappily married, he engaged in all manner of commerce, including the lucrative spice trade. The taciturn and hard-driving merchant had long ago assumed direction of the firm. The death of his chief creditor, the Prince Bishop of Brixen, whose inheritance was claimed by the Pope, brought about a serious crisis that Jakob managed to solve through shrewd negotiations. Prudently, he divided the company’s assets into cash holdings, production plants and merchandise, landed properties, and precious stones. In 1504 he secretly purchased from the city of Basel a portion of the captured crown jewels of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Laying the foundation for the family’s widely distributed landholdings, he acquired the countships of Kirchberg and Weissenhorn from Maximilian I in 1507. In 1514, the Emperor made him a count.
The chief financial supporter of Maximilian’s policies since 1490, Fugger was identified with these policies for better or for worse, even though he refused to support Maximilian’s bid for the papacy. His greatest achievement was the financing of the election of Charles V, Maximilian’s successor, as emperor. Of the total election expenses of 852,000 guilders, Jakob alone raised almost 544,000 in order to eliminate Francis I of France. By skillful negotiations he arranged to have this debt repaid out of the Maestrazgo – the lease of the revenues paid to the Spanish crown by three great knightly orders. A part of the sum came from the mercury mines of Almaden and the silver mines of Guadalcanal. In 1516 he also made an ally of King Henry VIII of England by granting him various loans.
At the height of this power Jakob was sharply criticized by his contemporaries, especially by the German reformer and humanist Ulrich von Hutten and by Martin Luther, for his stand on interest charges (among merchant dynasties that urged the Pope to amend or rescind the medieval prohibition on the levying of interest) and the sales of indulgences and benefices, as well as his loan policies. The imperial fiscal and governmental authorities in Nurnberg brought action against him and other merchants to halt their monopolistic tendencies. Jakob’s position was further threatened by social unrest among the mines in Tirol and at Neusohl in Hungary, by attempts of the Hungarian nobles to nationalize his mines, and by the Peasant’s Revolt. At the Augsburg headquarters he was threatened by an uprising of artisans. He mastered these crises through sheer tenacity and fixity of purpose. Albrecht Durer has immortalized the severe, taciturn face of the master merchant. As head of the company, Jakob, who was himself a man of few wants, created monuments to his time that have survived for centuries – in the Fugger buildings and the splendid memorial chapel and above all the Fuggerei, the world’s oldest social settlement, which can be endowed as a peaceful haven for his impoverished old servants and fellow citizens. In his last years, seeing his work and his church threatened by the Reformation, he fought the new movement.
At his death in 1525, Jakob bequeathed to his nephew Anton Fugger who had been destined for succession since 1517, company assets totaling 2,032,652 guilders.Three main learning points
1. Jakob II the Rich, who had originally been destined for an ecclesiastical career, studied modern bookkeeping from 1478 on.
2. True to his motto, “I want to gain while I can,” having no heir and unhappily married, he engaged in all manner of commerce, including the lucrative spice trade.
3. He was sharply criticized by his contemporaries, especially by the German reformer and humanist Ulrich von Hutten and by Martin Luther, for his stand on interest charges (among merchant dynasties that urged the Pope to amend or rescind the medieval prohibition on the levying of interest) and the sales of indulgences and benefices, as well as his loan policies. I used Encyclopedia Brittanica, Reference.com, Wikipedia.com, and Answers.com.

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Mitchell Cunningham

Carl Friedrich Gauss
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777 –1855) was a German mathematician and scientist of profound genius who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism, astronomy and optics. Gauss was born in Brunswick and died in Göttingen, Hanover Sometimes known as "the prince of mathematicians", Gauss had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked beside Euler, Newton and Archimedes as one of history's greatest mathematicians. Gauss was a child prodigy, of whom there are many anecdotes pertaining to his astounding precocity while a mere toddler, and made his first ground-breaking mathematical discoveries while still a teenager. He completed Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, his magnum opus, at the age of twenty-four. This work was fundamental in consolidating number theory as a discipline and has shaped the field to the present day.

• Gauss made important contributions to number theory with his 1801 book Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, which contained a clean presentation of modular arithmetic and the first proof of the law of quadratic reciprocity.
• In his 1799 dissertation, Gauss became the first to prove the fundamental theorem of algebra.
• Gauss invented the heliotrope which worked by reflecting the Sun's rays using a set of mirrors and a small telescope.
• 
  Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss

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Nic White

Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Gropius was born May 18th, 1883 in Berlin. He was a German architect and educator who, particularly as director of the Bauhaus from 1919-1928, exerted a major influence in the development of modern architecture. His works, many executed in collaboration with other architects, included the school building and faculty housing at the Bauhaus (1925-26), the Harvard University Graduate Center, and the US Embassy in Athens.
Gropius was the son of an architect. He studied architecture at the technical institutes in Munich from 1903-04, and in Berlin-Charlottenburg from 1905-07. He worked briefly in an architectural office in Berlin in 1904 and saw military service from 1904-05. Before completing school he built his first buildings, farm laborer’s cottages in Pomerania in 1906. For a year he traveled Italy, Spain, and England, and in 1907he joined the office of the architect Peter Behrens in Berlin.
Gropius acknowledged that his work with Behrens and the work he did for a German electrical company influenced his lifelong interest in progressive architecture and the interrelationship of the arts. From the time he left Behrens in 1910 until 1914, he developed a clear commitment to and talent for organization and a dedication to promoting his ideas on the arts. In 1914 he became a member of the German Labor League (Deutscher Werkbund). Gropius argued for such building techniques as prefabrication of parts and assembly on the site. However much he accepted the inevitability and restrictions of mechanization, he felt it was up to the artistically trained designer to “breathe a soul into the dead product of the machine.” He was against imitation, snobbery, and dogma in the arts, and cautioned against such oversimplification as the notion that the function of a product should determine its appearance.
Gropius growing intellectual leadership complemented his design of two significant buildings, both done with Adolph Meyer: the Fagus Works at Alfeld-an-der-Leine in 1911, and the model office and factory buildings in Cologne (1914), done for the Werkbund Expo. The Fagus Works were bolder than anything Behrens had done, while the buildings in Cologne were more formal and believed to have been influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright. They serve as testament to Gropius’ design maturity pre-WWI.
Gropius served as a cavalry officer in WWI, was wounded, and received the Iron Cross for bravery. In 1915 he married a widow named Alma Mahler, whom he met in 1910 when she was still married to a composer named Gustav Mahler. She cheated on him; they divorced in 1919. Their only child, Alma Manon, died in 1935.
Even before the end of the war, the city of Weimar approached Gropius for his ideas on art education. In April 1919 he became director of the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts, the Grand Ducal Saxon Academy of Arts, and the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts, which united to for Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, or Public Bauhaus Weimar. This appointment was the most decisive step in his career. Gropius succeeded in establishing a viable new approach to design education, one that became an international prototype and eventually supplanted the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
A key tenet of the teaching was the requirement that the architect and designer undergo a practical crafts training to acquaint themselves with materials and processes. Budget limitations permitted only a portion of the crafts shops to open. Much activity centered on handicrafts, such as ceramics, weaving, and stained-glass design. Many painters and sculptors joined the staff, among them Paul Klee and Gerhard Marcks.
Johannes Itten developed a beginning course called Vorkurs, which itself became the most widely copied aspect of the Bauhaus curriculum. Students explored two and three dimensional design using simple materials. Although his instructors were gifted, it was Gropius own persistence that made this educational experience work.
Gropius saw architecture and design as ever changing; he spoke of the architects’ duty to encompass the total visual environment. He himself designed furniture, a railroad car, and an automobile. He emphasized housing and city planning, the usefulness of sociology, and the necessity of using teams of specialists.
In 1925 Bauhaus moved to Dessau. There Gropius designed the school building and the faculty housing (1925-26). The school itself is a key monument of architecture and Gropius’ best known building. Gropius resigned as director of the Bauhaus in 1928, returning to practice privately as an architect in Berlin. During 1929-30 he designed a portion of a housing colony in Berlin-Siemensstadt.
Gropius and his second wife, Ise Frank, whom he married in 1923, left Germany secretly by Italy for exile in England in 1934. Hitler’s government closed the Bauhaus in 1933. Gropius’ brief time in England was marked by collaboration with Maxwell Fry that resulted in Village College at Impington, Cambridgeshire (1936).
February, 1933, Gropius arrived in Cambridge, Mass., to become professor of architecture at Harvard. The following year he was made chairman of the department, a post he held until his retirement in 1952. He became a naturalized citizen of the US in 1944. At Harvard he introduced the Bauhaus philosophy of design into the curriculum, although he was unable to implement the workshops, and was also unable to abolish the history of architecture as a course. His crusade for modern design was immediately popular among the students, and his innovations at Harvard soon provoked similar educational reforms at other architectural schools in the US and marked the beginning of the end of a historically imitative architecture.
In addition to teaching, Gropius collaborated with former pupil Marcel Breuer from 1937 to 1940. Among their designs was Gropius’ own house, which stirred up controversy that both lived to see accepted. In 1942 Gropius renewed his interest in the production of architecture by industry when he became Vice Pres. Of General Panel Corporation, a company that made prefab housing. He retired in 1952.
In 1946 he and six of his former Harvard pupils formed The Architects Collaborative (TAC), based in Cambridge. Among its commissions, TAC received one to do the Harvard University Graduate Center. Other TAC designs include the US Embassy in Athens and the University of Baghdad. Gropius remained an active member of TAC until he died at 86.

Three teaching points:
1. He was a German architect and educator who, particularly as director of the Bauhaus from 1919-1928, exerted a major influence in the development of modern architecture.
2. His works, many executed in collaboration with other architects, included the school building and faculty housing at the Bauhaus (1925-26), the Harvard University Graduate Center, and the US Embassy in Athens.
3. Gropius saw architecture and design as ever changing; he spoke of the architects’ duty to encompass the total visual environment. He himself designed furniture, a railroad car, and an automobile. He emphasized housing and city planning, the usefulness of sociology, and the necessity of using teams of specialists.

I used Encyclopedia Brittanica, Wikipedia.com, Answers.com, and References.com for this information.

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Hildegard of Bingen

A summary by Pamela Langston
 
Hildegard of Bingen, also called Saint Hildegard or Blessed Hildegard, was a German abbess, monastic leader, mystic, author, and composer of music. She was born in 1098 at Bockelheim, to a family of nobility. The 10h child of her family, and a sickly one at that, Hildegard was sent as a tithe to the church at the age of eight. She was entrusted to the care of the nun Jutta, sister to the count of Sponheim, who was enormously popular. A small cloister had sprung up around Jutta at Disibodenberg, and upon Jutta’s death in 1136, Hildegard was chosen as Mother Superior of the community. Hildegard then moved the cloister to a new monastery at Rupertsberg, near Bingen on the Rhine, a short time later.

From the time that Hildegard was a child, she had experienced holy visions. At the age of 43, five years after her election as Mother Superior, Hildegard received a prophetic call from God, demanding of her, “Write what you see”. She was not immediately receptive of this and continued to hold her visions inside, until this made her fall physically ill. She consulted her confessor, who in turn contacted the archbishop of Mainz. Her visions were confirmed as authentic and a monk was appointed to help her record them. The finished product of this, a work entitled Scivias (1141-1152) consisted of 26 visions which were both prophetic and apocalyptic.

Hildegard went on to write two more prophetic records of her visions. Hildegard also authored Physica and Causae et Curae (1150), two treatises on medicine and natural history, which are together known as Liber subtilatum ("The book of subtleties of the Diverse Nature of Things"). These works were uncharacteristic of Hildegard's writings, including her correspondences, in that they were not presented in a visionary form and don't contain any references to divine source or revelation. However, like her religious writings they reflected her religious philosophy-that the man was the peak of God's creation and everything was put in the world for man to use. She also wrote several lives of saints, and for her amusement invented her own language. An unusual woman for her time, Hildegard traveled widely, gave public speeches, and consulted with popes and heads of state.

There are also many musical works written by Hildegard. Approximately eighty compositions survive, which is a far larger repertoire than almost any other medieval composer. Among her better known works is the Ordo Virtutum ("Order of the Virtues" or "Play of the Virtues"), a type of early oratorio for women's voices, with one male part - that of the Devil. It was created, like all of Hildegard's music, to be performed by the nuns of her convent. Hildegard also wrote hymns and sequences in honor of saints, virgins and Mary. She wrote in the plainchant tradition of a single vocal melodic line, the predominant method of liturgical singing in the 12th century. Currently, her music is enjoying increased popularity and success, due to a revival of interest in music written by medieval women of the Church.

Hildegard was proclaimed a saint by her earliest biographer, and several miracles were reported during her life and at her tomb. Her canonization was officially applied for, but the process took so long that it was not completed, although she has been beatified. As a result of the long-standing devotion of the people to Hildegard, her name was taken up in the Roman martyrology at the end of the sixteenth century without a formal canonization process, earning her the title of saint. Her feast day is September 17, the date of her death at her abbey at Rupertsberg in 1179, which is still widely celebrated in many German dioceses.

Hildegard is best remembered for the prophetic records of her divine visions, but was also the author of many other works, both scholarly and sacred. She was a prolific composer and contributed much to the music of the church, particularly music for women. She had an unwavering faith in God and was well loved by those who knew her, and her popularity continues to this day.

Sources

“Hildegard of Bingen,” Encyclopedia Britannica, Fifteenth Edition, 2002.
“Hildegard of Bingen,” Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.com.

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Alexander von Humboldt

A summary by Pamela Langston
 

Alexander von Humboldt, also known as Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander, Baron von Humboldt, was a German naturalist and explorer. He was born in Berlin in 1769. He was privately educated and was at first a poor student. However, after a short, futile stint studying economics, Humboldt discovered botany and was at once passionately interested in it. This began a lifelong love of plants and a desire to catalogue the flora of many lands. Humboldt attended several different universities; although he never took a degree he became well versed in many scientific subjects, including mineralogy and geology. He obtained a position with the Prussian government: appointed assessor of mines at Berlin, February 29, 1792. Although this service to the state was regarded by him as only an apprenticeship to the service of science, he fulfilled its duties with such conspicuous ability that he not only rose rapidly to the highest post in his department, but was as well entrusted with several important diplomatic missions.

What Humboldt truly desired to do was scientific exploration in faraway lands, and he finally got his chance in 1799. Humboldt’s mother had died in 1796, leaving him a substantial estate. Having resigned his post with the Prussian government, he financed out of his own pocket an expedition to South America; taking along with him the French botanist Aime Bonpland whom he had met in Paris, he sailed from Marseille for the Spanish colonies. This proved to be the most important trip of his life. For the next five years, Humboldt and Bonpland explored more than 6,000 miles of terrain on horseback, on foot and by canoe. Humboldt made countless notes and measurements of temperature, barometric pressure and weather, and catalogued all of the new plants that he came across. He and Bonpland also climbed many mountains in the Andes that would be considered highly difficult by today’s standards; all without the help of modern mountaneering equipment and oxygen supplies. As a result, Humboldt became the first person to attribute mountain sickness to lack of oxygen, which was a scientific discovery in itself.

With the exception of Napoleon Bonaparte, Humboldt was now the most famous man in Europe. After returning to Paris, he busied himself with publication of the data accumulated on his South American expedition. He collaborated with many French scientists, engravers and publishers to produce the 30 volumes into which the scientific results of the expedition were distilled. Many feel that through his observations, Humboldt laid the foundation in their larger bearings of the sciences of physical geography and meteorology. He delineated “isotherms” (lines connecting points with the same mean temperature) which at once suggested the idea and devised the means of comparing the climatic conditions of various countries. He also pioneered the study on the relationship between a region’s geography and its flora and fauna. Through his study of volcanoes of the Andes, Humboldt also once and for all disproved the hypothesis of the so-called Neptunists who believed that the earth’s crust had been totally formed by sedimentation.

Humboldt enjoyed his life in Paris, cultivating long-lasting friendships with well-known scientists, until 1827 when his fortune had been depleted to such a point that he could no longer afford to live there. His fortune, however, had not been wasted; through his generosity and magnanimity, he had financially and academically helped many promising students of science who lacked the means to embark on their careers. Humboldt now returned to Berlin where his presence was demanded at the King’s court. He served there as a tutor to the Crown Prince, and fulfilled other roles as well. Through his court position he worked to better the situation of science and to popularize scientific methods and ideas. As part of his efforts, in 1828 he organized one of the first international scientific conferences. It is a testament to Humboldt’s grace and aplomb that he was able to do this, since large gatherings of possibly liberal-minded people were looked down upon by governments in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and the increased interest in democracy.

In 1829, Humboldt was given an opportunity to visit Russia and Siberia. He decided to seize it even though he had misgivings about it, due to the political situation of this country whose despotism he abhorred. Between May and November 1829 he, together with his chosen associates Gustav Rose and C. G. Ehrenberg, traversed the wide expanse of the Russian empire, accomplishing in twenty-five weeks a distance of 9614 miles. The expedition was almost too rapid to be useful, but it did allow Humboldt to correct the prevalent exaggerated estimate of the height of the Central Asian plateau, and to assist in discovering diamonds in some of the gold-mining areas. After returning, Humboldt began studying geomagnetic fields of the earth – something he had begun during his South American expedition – and eventually, with the help of mathematician Carl Gauss and British geophysicist Sir Edward Sabine, proved the extraterrestrial origin of the earth’s magnetic storms.

Humboldt’s later years were spent writing Kosmos, one of the most ambitious scientific works ever published. He produced four volumes during his lifetime. The scope of this remarkable work may be briefly described as the representation of the unity amid the complexity of nature. In it the large and vague ideals of the 18th are sought to be combined with the exact scientific requirements of the 19th century. Never one to rest on his own laurels, Humboldt filled the notes to Kosmos with laudatory citations, the current coin in which he discharged his intellectual debts. Humboldt passed away in Berlin in 1859 at age 90, while working on the fifth volume of his most famous work.

In conclusion, Alexander von Humboldt opened up a world of new scientific ideas through his passionate study of the earth, most notably during his South American expedition. He was a tireless explorer and was dedicated to furthering scientific thought by hands-on experience as well as by scholarly research. He was also a prolific author, leaving behind dozens of volumes and treatises as his legacy to future generations of scientists.


Sources
“Alexander von Humboldt.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Fifteenth Edition, 2002.
“Alexander von Humboldt.” Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.com. November 16, 2005

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Liz Kassera

Wilhelm von Humboldt
Born in 1767 in Potsdam, Wilhelm von Humboldt is known as a philosopher, foreign diplomat, education reformer, linguist, and friend of Goethe and Schiller. He was the elder brother to the equally famed Alexander von Humboldt, an intellectual in the field of natural sciences. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s intellectual capacity and foresight is held in high regard even today. In his own words, “If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions on the human mind.” Humboldt has been credited with being the first European linguist to identify human languages as a rule-governed system. His theory is one of the foundations of Noam Chomsky’s theory of language, transformational grammer. Chomsky, one of the U.S.’s greatest minds, frequently quotes Humboldt’s description of language as a system which “makes infinite use of finite means”, meaning that an infinite number of sentences can be created using a finite number of words. Humboldt was a philosopher who published On the Limits of State Action in 1810. This work was a bold defense of Enlightenment liberties and anticipated John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty. As Prussian minister of education, he oversaw the educational system that made Prussia, and subsequently the German Empire, the strongest European power and the scientific and intellectual leader of the world. The newly structured educational system was intended to guarantee all social classes better access to education. During the closing struggles of the Napoleonic Wars, Humboldt served as a successful diplomat, first in Rome, then in Vienna. He was instrumental in drawing Austria to ally with Prussia and Russia against France and a signer of the Treaty of Paris. The increasingly reactionary policies of the Prussian government made him give up political life in 1819. He died in 1835 while still working on the ancient Kawi language of Java, considered to be what was to have been his greatest work.

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Nicole Golden

Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler was born at 2:30 PM on December 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Württemberg, in the Holy Roman Empire of German nationality. He was a sickly child and his parents were poor. But his evident intelligence earned him a scholarship to the University of Tübingen to study for the Lutheran ministry. There he was introduced to the ideas of Copernicus and delighted in them. In 1596, while a mathematics teacher in Graz, he wrote the first outspoken defense of the Copernican system, the Mysterium Cosmographicum.
Kepler's family was Lutheran and he adhered to the Augsburg Confession, a defining document for Lutheranism. However, he did not adhere to the Lutheran position on the real presence and refused to sign the Formula of Concord. Because of his refusal he was excluded from the sacrament in the Lutheran church. This and his refusal to convert to Catholicism left him alienated by both the Lutherans and the Catholics. Thus he had no refuge during the Thirty-Years War.
Kepler was forced to leave his teaching post at Graz due to the Counter-Reformation because he was Lutheran and moved to Prague to work with the renowned Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. He inherited Tycho's post as Imperial Mathematician when Tycho died in 1601. Using the precise data that Tycho had collected, Kepler discovered that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse. In 1609 he published Astronomia Nova, delineating his discoveries, which are now called Kepler's first two laws of planetary motion. And what is just as important about this work, "it is the first published account wherein a scientist documents how he has coped with the multitude of imperfect data to forge a theory of surpassing accuracy" (O. Gingerich in forward to Johannes Kepler New Astronomy translated by W. Donahue, Cambridge Univ Press, 1992), a fundamental law of nature. Today we call this the scientific method.
In 1612 Lutherans were forced out of Prague, so Kepler moved on to Linz. His wife and two sons had recently died. He remarried happily, but had many personal and financial troubles. Two infant daughters died and Kepler had to return to Württemberg where he successfully defended his mother against charges of witchcraft. In 1619 he published Harmonices Mundi, in which he describes his "third law."
In spite of more forced relocations, Kepler published the seven-volume Epitome Astronomiae in 1621. This was his most influential work and discussed all of heliocentric astronomy in a systematic way. He then went on to complete the Rudolphine Tables that Tycho had started long ago. These included calculations using logarithms, which he developed, and provided perpetual tables for calculating planetary positions for any past or future date. Kepler used the tables to predict a pair of transits by Mercury and Venus of the Sun, although he did not live to witness the events.
Kepler believed that the sun did not sit passively at the center of the solar system but that through some mysterious power or “virtue” actually compelled the planets to hold to their orbits. Because the planets moved slower when they were farther from the sun, this power must diminish with increasing distance. He was eventually able to build on the realization that the orbits of the planets were ellipses to formulate his Three Laws of Planetary Motion. Kepler's First Law:
The orbits of the planets are ellipses, with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse. The Sun is not at the center of the ellipse, but is instead at one focus. Kepler's Second Law: The line joining the planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times as the planet travels around the ellipse. Kepler's Third Law: The ratio of the squares of the revolutionary periods for two planets is equal to the ratio of the cubes of their semimajor axes.
Johannes Kepler died in Regensburg in 1630, while on a journey from his home in Sagan to collect a debt. His grave was demolished within two years because of the Thirty Years War. Frail of body, but robust in mind and spirit, Kepler was scrupulously honest to the data.Resources:
Cesp10.phys.utk.edu
Kepler.nasa.gov/Johannes/
www.encyclopedia.com

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Mysti Griffith

Robert Koch
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch (December 11, 1843 – May 27, 1910) was a German physician. He became famous for the discovery of the anthrax bacillus (1877), the tubercle bacillus (1882) and the cholera bacillus (1883) and for his development of Koch's postulates. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his tuberculosis findings in 1905. He is considered one of the founders of bacteriology.
Robert Koch was born in Clausthal, Germany as the son of a mining official. He studied medicine under Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle at the University of Göttingen and graduated in 1866. He then served in the Franco-Prussian War and later became district medical officer in Wollstein (Wolsztyn). Working with very limited resources, he became one of the founders of bacteriology, the other being Louis Pasteur.
After Casimir Davaine showed the direct transmission of the anthrax bacillus between cows, Koch studied anthrax more closely. He invented methods to purify the bacillus from blood samples and grow pure cultures. He found that, while it could not survive outside a host for long, anthrax built persisting endospores that could last a long time. These endospores, embedded in soil, were the cause of unexplained "spontaneous" outbreaks of anthrax. Koch published his findings in 1876, and was rewarded with a job at the Imperial Health Office in Berlin in 1880.
In Berlin, he improved the methods he used in Wollstein, including staining and purification techniques, and bacterial growth media, including agar plates, thanks to the advice of his wife, and the Petri dish (named after J.R. Petri), both of which are still used today. With these techniques, he was able to discover the bacterium causing tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) in 1882 (he announced the discovery on March 24). Tuberculosis was the cause of one in seven deaths in the mid-19th century. The importance of his findings raised Koch to the level of Louis Pasteur in bacteriological research.
In 1883, Koch worked with a French research team in Alexandria, Egypt, studying cholera. Koch identified the vibrio bacterium that caused cholera, though he never managed to prove it in experiments. The bacterium had been previously isolated by Italian anatomist Filippo Pacini in 1854, but his work had been ignored due to the predominance of the miasma theory of disease. Koch was unaware of Pacini's work and made an independent discovery, and his greater preeminence allowed the discovery to be widely spread for the benefit of others. In 1965, however, the bacterium was formally renamed Vibrio cholerae Pacini 1854.
In 1885, he became professor for hygiene at the University of Berlin, and later, in 1891, director of the newly formed Institute of Infectious Diseases, a position which he resigned from in 1904. He started travelling around the world, studying diseases in South Africa, India, and Java.
Probably as important as his work on tuberculosis, for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize, are Koch's postulates, which say that to establish that an organism is the cause of a disease, it must be:

• found in all cases of the disease examined
• prepared and maintained in a pure culture
• capable of producing the original infection, even after several generations in culture
• could be retrieved from an inoculated animal and cultured again.
  But after his success the quality of his own research declined (especially with the fiasco over his ineffective TB cure 'tuberculin'), although his pupils using his methods found the organisms responsible for diphtheria, typhoid, pneumonia, gonorrhoea, cerebrospinal meningitis, leprosy, bubonic plague, tetanus, and syphilis among others.
  He died in Baden-Baden, Germany.

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Jake Russell

Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz was born in 1867, in the king mountains. As a child she studies at the artist school in Berlin with Karl Stauffer Berne. He is the man who first showed her erasures. By the year 1890, she had made her first erasure. The following year she married Dr. Karl Kollwitz, who was a doctor and working in north Berlin. In 1893 she was first noticed by Julius Elias at the “free art exhibition”. This event really inspired her life and in that year she developed the “weber (weaver) rebellion”. In 1898, it was the “weber rebellion”. that gave her attention was now a break through to the public and it was shown in the Berlin art exhibit. Her next major work was, in 1902 through 1908, was farmer war. The consequence of this was late in 1908 it was received as an association gift. Directly after that, starting in the year 1908, she began work on Simplicissimus. Her next great achievement came in the year 1919, when she was appointed as the first woman to have the title of professor at the Prussian academy of arts. Next she begins working on wood carvings and finds some success with her sequence on war. Her next wood carving was proletariat which appeared in the year 1925. In 1933 she was dismissed from her role of chief of masters at the Prussian academy of arts, because of she signed the urgent appeal. After that she begins a sequence of 8 lithographies on the topic of death. I thank she manly concentrated on this title because of all the deaths around her. Finally she dies in Moritzburg in 1945, just as the war was ending.
The main point of interest for her life is, first, in 1893 when she attended the free art exhibit and was noticed by Julius Elias. I thought this was important because it opened the door to her career. The next most important thing she accomplished was the weber rebellion. This was her first public break through and it was also shown at the Berlin art exhibit. Lastly, the greatest thing she accomplished in her life, to me, was that she was the first woman as a member of the Prussian academy of arts.
My source was from the internet and I found this information in Google under Käthe Kollwitz. The web page address is: (http://216.239.39.104/translate_c?hl=en=&u=http://www.kollwitz.de/kollwitz.htm&prev=/...)

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Liz Kassera

Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang was born in Vienna in 1890. During his life, he served in the First World War, spectacular fame in Germany in the 1920s, escape from the Nazis, and an often difficult period of reinvention in Hollywood. Lang used cinema to explore a personal fascination with, in his words, “cruelty, fear, horror and death.” His film-making style is characterized by grandeur of scale, striking visual compositions and sound effects, suspense, and narrative economy. He is most noted for use of the dark side of human nature: vengeance, violence, and the criminal mind. His heroes are bought down by injustice, bad women, or the iron jaws of fate. “Metropolis” (1926), a powerful expressionistic drama about a futuristic slave society, was a stunning technical achievement; despite its simplistic message it remains a classic. In his film “The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse” Lang used a madman in an asylum to espouse Nazi doctrines. After it opened, he was summoned by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, and invited to supervise Nazi film production. Lang fled Germany that evening, leaving behind a personal fortune and a vast collection of primitive art. Lang would later gain U.S. citizenship in 1935. He became obsessed with the American West and for American slang. He was known to be a temperamental and dictatorial presence on set. His differences with producers in Hollywood prompted his departure from the States back to Europe, although he would come back. He died in 1976 in Beverly Hills.

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Maddy Dinsmore

Karl May (author of children’s literature)
Karl May was born February 25th, 1842, in Hohenstein-Ernstthal, Saxony. His father was a weaver and made very little money to support the 14 children. Mr. May became blind shortly after birth due to malnutrition and disease, but regain sight at around age four with the help of medication. It is believed that during this time of blindness is when his imagination began to expand out of the ordinary realms with his grandmother’s fairy tales.
Mr. May’s father made it possible for him to go to school to become an elementary school teacher. But Karl was arrested twice and lost his teaching license. The first offence was due to six candle sticks being missing from the school that he had taken home to his family. The second offence, he was caught with a pocket watch that a colleague reported missing. It is thought that Mr. May claimed to have been borrowing the watch and was going to use it to impress his family with a false since of security in his financial status. With the loss of his teaching license a downward spiral occurred, and the desperate measures caused him to use his imagination in a dangerous way. Karl May began to masquerade as many different characters such as a medical doctor, and a police officer. He was caught twice and went to jail. For the first conviction he was sent to the Arbeitshaus which is a jail where you work for the duration of the sentence. The second conviction was spent in Zuchthaus- a high level security prison. While in jail he was exposed to writers such as Fenimore Cooper.
After his release in 1874, Karl May channeled his creativity into writing literature and becoming an editor for a local Dresden magazines. While working for the magazines most of his stories consisted of sentimental fictional village stories that would be twisted without his consent. During this time he started his blue print of one of his most popular characters Indian characters Winnetou. Going under pen names Karl May began to publish his works and hit his peek in 1890’s. With combining with type of writing that he admired, such as Fenimore Cooper, and his imagination, May was known for his fictional travel novels for young adults. The well known novels are the Winnetou Trilogy. Told by May alter ego Old Shatterhand, who is the white blood brother of Winnetou, readers are taken on journeys through the Wild West with Winnetou the wise chief of the Apache Tribe. White men were viewed as comically stupid and evil and Winnetou seemed to have super human strength. The next set of famous traveling books is about Arabia, told by Kara Ben Nemsi. Along with his loyal servant and local guide Hadschi Halef Omar, they set off for adventures across the desert. Out of the 60 different works that Karl May wrote the three that he is best known for are: Der Schatz im Silbersee (the Treasure in the Silver Sea), Durch die Wuste (In the Desert), and his autobiography Mein Leben and Streben (My Life and Struggle).
He did finally visit America and Canada in 1908 but went no farther west than Buffalo, NY. When he made his way back home the people of Germany found him to be a fraud and a disgrace, because news of his past encounters with the law had leaked out. May took a trip to the oriental as well and realized how far off he was on describing each one of the places that he had done so in his novels. German literary critiques today find his work laughable because of the inaccuracies, and the broad stereotyping, as well as the poor writing, but don’t dare tell the German public that.
After Karl May’s Death in 1912, he was still widely read and loved by most Europeans. Even Herman Hesse and Albert Einstein claimed to be admirers of his work, but one admirer would have been the downfall of May. Hitler was a fan of May and used him as an example that you don’t have to go everywhere to understand the culture. After the fall of Hitler there was some talk of banning his books but the German people’s love for his writings prevailed.
Today there is a publishing house named after him, the Karl May Verlag in Bamberg, as well as two open air theatres and an amusement park. His books have been translated into over 30 languages and his house in Radebeul, Villa Shatterhand, has been turned into a museum. Once a year there is even a festival thrown in honor of Karl May and the creativity that he inspired in the young people of the past, present, and future.
Three most important teaching points
1. General history of Karl May
2. Knowledge of his two main literary pieces and characters
3. Affects of the fall of Hitler
Recources
Encyclopedia Brittanica-7:969:1a
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5731
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_May - 27k
http://www.jkt.detik.com/karlmay/sipemakituhan/ - 36k
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/karlmay.htm
http://www.cowboysindians.com/articles/archives/0999/karl_may.html
http://german.about.com/library/bllesen01_intro2.htm

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James Hess

Ottmar Mergenthaler
1854 – 1899
Ottmar Mergenthaler, from Hachtel in Baden-Württemberg's Tauber valley, has been called a second Gutenberg. Like Gutenberg, Mergenthaler revolutionized the art of printing. Prior to Mergenthaler's invention of the linotype, no newspaper in the world had more than eight pages.
Born May 11, 1854, Mergenthaler was the son of a poor village school teacher who moved soon after Ottmar's birth to Ensingen, on the Enz river. There the clock in the church's bell tower had stood still for years, and no clockmaker had been able to repair it. One evening, however, the bells suddenly rang at evensong. "The schoolmaster's boy has done it!" was the surprised reaction.
Mergenthaler's ambition at that time was to become a watchmaker. Although his father was initially opposed to the idea, after some hesitation he apprenticed him to a relative named Hahl in Bietigheim.
In 1872 Ottmar moved to America. At first, Mergenthaler worked on knives and tools in August Hahl's machine shop, and obtained his first patent at the age of 20. Hahl moved to Baltimore where Mergenthaler became a member of the Liederkranz Society and of the German Turnverein. He always had more ideas than time to execute them. Word of his talents soon spread.
On August 17, 1876, a stranger, Charles Moore, entered the shop, of which Mergenthaler had become co-owner. Moore told him he held a patent on a typewriter for newspapers which was designed to eliminate type-setting by hand, but that it just did not work. He asked Mergenthaler whether he could construct a better model. Mergenthaler promptly recognized that Moore's design was faulty, but set about improving it. Two years later, he had assembled a machine that stamped letters and words on cardboard. But that was not what he had envisioned.
He then worked like a man possessed to construct what was to capture the attention of the world under the name of "Linotype" In doing so, he had to overcome many difficulties. One night, fire destroyed the shop, including all his designs and models. He knew, however, that if he succeeded, his invention would mean "more books --- more education for all. At home we had no money for school books..." He found a supporter in Whitelaw Reid of the New York Tribune. Finally, while riding on a train, the idea came to him: why a separate machine for casting and another for stamping? Why not stamp the letters and immediately cast them in metal in the same machine?
Much effort and another fifty patents were required before Mergenthaler could show a more or less usable model to the New York Tribune on July 3, 1886. There followed fights with shareholders and unions. And the press even in Germany attacked him vehemently. Finally success came with many honors, including a trip to his old home town. Soon afterwards, Mergenthaler contracted tuberculosis and died at the early age of 44 in Baltimore on October 28, 1899.
The linotype was the biggest invention in printing since Johann Gutenberg invented movable type. His invention allowed for a faster printing process causing all printed material to drop dramatically in price. More people could afford books now so literacy increased. Finally, information was able to spread quicker spawning new ideas and furthering mankind’s knowledge.
Sources
http://www.zionbaltimore.org/history_people_mergenthaler.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottmar_Mergenthaler
http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/102.html
http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/journalism/lino.html

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Jeremy Lintz

Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian was born on 2nd April, 1647 in Frankfort on the Maine. Her father, Matthäus Merian the Elder, was a Swiss printmaker and publisher who died when she was three. One year later her mother married Jacob Marell, a Flemish flower painter and one of Merian's first teachers. Merian was interested in drawing the animals and plants she saw around her. In 1670, five years after her marriage to the painter Johann Andreas Graff, the family moved to Nuremberg, where Merian published her first illustrated books. In 1685 Merian left Nuremberg and her husband, from whom she was later divorced, to live with her two daughters and her widowed mother in the Dutch province of West Friesland. After her mother's death, Merian returned to Amsterdam. Eight years later, at the age of 52, Merian took the astonishing step of embarking-with her younger daughter, but no male companion-on a dangerous, three-month trip to the Dutch colony of Surinam, in South America. Having seen some of the dried specimens of animals and plants that were popular with European collectors, Merian wanted to study them within their natural habitat. She spent the next two years studying and drawing the indigenous flora and fauna. While in Dutch Guiana Merian painted a bird-eating spider which was later ridiculed as a flight of female fancy until 1863 when an English naturalist observed a similar spider in the Amazon forest. Forced home by malaria, Merian published her most significant book in 1705. Merian's interests in Surinam went beyond nature and art. She thought of possible commercial ventures, hoping to find caterpillars that might produce silk, or something like it. And she befriended many of the African and Native American slaves, recording their hardships as well as their botanical knowledge. The lavishly illustrated Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam established her international reputation. A second, posthumous, edition was published under the title Dissertation in Insect Generations and Metamorphosis in Surinam.
Merian was the daughter of the well known engraver and publisher Matthäus Merian. At the turn of the 18th century, it was rather unthinkable for a woman to travel to a foreign country without the protection of a man. When a woman was of such an advanced age (52), the idea was even more shocking. By the time she traveled from Amsterdam to Surinam, Merian had already published a series of illustrations, titled Book of Flowers, through her own publishing business. Because of the great demand of her book she decided to publish a color version, New Book of Flowers. Among the roses, lilies, peonies, carnations, daffodils and tulips, she illustrated caterpillars, butterflies, dragonflies and beetles.
Teaching Points
1. Merian was the daughter of a well known engraver and publisher, Matthaus Merian.
2. Merian published illustration books of flowers and insects.
3. Merian was also ahead of her time by being independent in her travels and not needing the company or protection of a man with her.
Works Cited
www.astr.ua.edu/4000ws/MERIAN.html
www.nmwa.org/collection/profile.
The Columbia Encyclopedia. Fifth Edition, 1993. Pg. 1751

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Trent Hudson
 

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1886-1969
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was an architect and designer who was born in Aachen, Germany in 1886. His architectural style has been summarized by the phrase “less is more.” As a young man, he worked in his father's stone-carving shop before he moved to Berlin and joined the office of Bruno Paul. He worked at the design studio of Peter Behrens from 1908 to 1912, where he was exposed to the current design theories and to progressive German culture.
Later, he developed prominence as architectural director of the Werkbund, organizing the Weissenhof prototype housing project. In 1929, he built his famous German Pavilion at an international exposition in Barcelona, Spain. A year later, Mies served briefly as the last Director of the faltering Bauhaus school of design in Dessau, Germany, at the request of his friend and competitor Walter Gropius.
Mies left his homeland reluctantly in 1937 as he saw his opportunity for future building commissions vanish, accepting a residential commission in Wyoming and then an offer to head an architectural school in Chicago. Mies settled in Chicago, Illinois where he was appointed as head of the architecture school at Chicago's Armour Institute of Technology (later renamed Illinois Institute of Technology - IIT). One of his conditions for taking this position was that he would be commissioned to design the new buildings of the campus.
This led to some of his most significant projects in the US including the residential towers of 860-880 Lake Shore Dr, the Farnsworth House, Crown Hall School of Design and other structures at IIT, all in and around Chicago, and the Seagram Headquarters building in New York. One of his most famous buildings, the Seagram building (1958) was codesigned by him and Phillip Johnson. The structure features glass walls, and it shows his love of fine materials and regular forms that he believed were applicable to any type of building. Mies died in 1969.
1. Philosophy summarized by “less is more”
2. One of the most influential architects of the 20th century
3. Some of his most famous designs include buildings on the IIT campus and the Seagram Headquarters building
Works Cited
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Mies_van_der_Rohe
World Book Encyclopedia p.536, copyright 2005

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Avery Edwards

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876 - 1907)
At the encouragement of her parents, Paula Becker studied art in Paris and was influenced by famous Post-Impressionists, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. She classes at the Association of Berlin Women Artists from 1893 to 1895, and joined an artist’s colony at Worpswede. Her early paintings were landscapes, while her later works show her increasing interest in portraiture and the Expressionist movement. In 1901, she married her older friend and mentor, Otto Modersohn. His controlling demeanor caused Modersohn-Becker to leave her husband in 1906 and move to Paris, where she died during childbirth.
In 1900, Rainer Maria Rilke met Paula Becker in the rural artist colony of Worpswede, Germany and immediately fell in love with her strength of personality and artistic talent. They were both 24 years old. Though Paula was also drawn to Rilke, she was already betrothed to German painter Otto Modersohn. They were engaged just weeks after she met Rilke who, upon discovering their relationship, rebounded to Paula's best friend, sculptress Clara Westhoff. The two artist couples -- self-named "The Family" for the strong artistic bonds they formed -- both married in the Spring of 1901.
Over the next few years Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker corresponded in letters. During the spring and summer of 1906 they attended numerous cultural events together in Paris when Paula lived apart from Otto to focus exclusively on her art. At the time Paula also had no intention of returning to Otto. During this period Paula painted numerous works, among them her famous portrait of Rilke, a now frequent visitor to her studio. Though Paula didn't always agree with Rilke's "Art vs. Life" arguments, both showed a respect common between equals and "lovers in spirit". Rilke's argument was that certain women artists were never meant to bear children but rather, to gestate and birth the lifelong fruition of their Art. Though Paula wanted children, she did not want them yet. She wanted to create more art first. However, in the autumn of 1906, Otto visited Paula in Paris pleading with her to return with him to rural Germany. During this meeting Rilke was nowhere to be seen. After what must have been a difficult decision, Paula joined Otto back to Worpswede, Germany. This was also the last time Rilke would see Paula.
On November 20th, eighteen days after the birth of their daughter Mathilde, Paula suddenly died of post-natal complications; an embolism in her leg erupted in thrombosis and cardiac arrest. While standing fully conscious in her own bedroom, she spoke her final words,"what a shame", and collapsed. With almost 600 paintings and over a thousand sketches, Paula's sudden and tragic death came at the peak of her artistic development. Rilke wrote "Requiem For a Friend", his lyrical lament and tribute to Paula, alone in a room at the Hotel Biron in Paris. Though his "Requiem" was published a few months later (1909), the trauma of Paula's death haunted Rilke for most of his remaining years.

Teaching PointsPaula Becker-Modersohn
In 1900, Rainer Maria Rilke met Paula Becker and immediately fell in love with her strength of personality and artistic talent.
After the birth of her daughter, Paula suddenly died of post-natal complications. While standing fully conscious in her own bedroom, she spoke her final words,"what a shame", and collapsed.
Rilke wrote "Requiem For a Friend", his lyrical lament and tribute to Paula, alone in a room at the Hotel Biron in Paris.
Sources: http://worldwideartsresources.com/masters/m/modersohn-becker-paula.html
http://www.paratheatrical.com/pages/videofilms/gc-rilkepaula.html

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Nicole Golden
 
Martin Niemoeller, was born in Lippstadt, Germany, on January 14th, 1892. At the age of eighteen Niemoeller became an officer-cadet in the German Navy. Niemoeller was assigned to the training vessel Hertha and eventually graduated to the battleship Thuringen. By the time World War I began in 1914, Niemoeller had reached the rank of Sub-Lieutenant. It was decided that the Thuringen was too old and was retired from active service. Niemoeller was assigned to a mine-laying submarine. By the end of the war he was seen as one of Germany’s most successful U-boat captains and was awarded the Iron Cross.
After the war Niemoeller became active in German politics. Senior officers in the German Army began raising private armies called Freikorps. These were used to defend the German borders against the possibility of invasion from the Red Army. Niemoeller joined this group and took part in the attempt to stop a socialist revolution taking place in Germany.
After the establishment of the Weimar Republic, Niemoeller decided to study theology. He remained interested in politics and became a supporter Adolf Hilter and in the 1924 elections, voted for the Nazi Party. Even after he was ordained in 1929 and became pastor of the Church of Jesus Christ at Dahlem, he remained an ardent supporter of Hilter.
In 1933, Niemoeller complained about the decision by Adolf Hilter to appoint Ludwig Muller as the country’s Reich Bishop of the Protestant Church. With the support of Karl Barth, a professor of theology at Bonn University, in May, 1934, a group of rebel pastors formed what became known as the Confessional Church.
The Confessional Church was founded in 1933 by Martin Niemoeller as the Pastors’ Emergency League and was systematically opposed to the Nazi-sponsored German Christian Church. The immediate occasion for the opposition was the attempt by the Nazis soon after their rise to power to purge the German Evangelical Church of converted Jews and to make the church subservient to the state. After the arrest of many of its ministers, the church was forced underground. Eventually the more moderate Lutheran Council replaced it as the most effective opponent to the Nazi regime. After the war Niemoeller and his followers continued as a separate group within the German Evangelical Church.
When the Nazi government continued with this policy Niemoeller joined with Dietrich Bonhoffer to form the Pastors’ Emergency League and published a major document opposing the religious policies of Adolf Hilter. Niemoeller was particularly concerned by Hilter’s decision the Jews should be expelled from the church. He argued that once Jews had been converted to Christianity they should be allowed to remain in the Church. Niemoeller was later to admit that his group “acted as if we had only to sustain the church” and did not accept that they had a “responsibility for the whole nation.”
The following month Niemoeller was himself arrested. He was held eight months without trial and when his case eventually took place he was found guilty of “abusing the pulpit” and was fined 2000 marks. As he left the court he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp to be “re-educated.” He was quoted as saying, “First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.” Niemoeller refused to change his views and was later transferred to Dachau.
While he was in Dachau his youngest daughter Jutta died of diphtheria. On February 28th his eldest son was killed in battle in Pomerania. Another son was captured by the Red Army while fighting on the Eastern Front. In 1945, with the Allies moving in on Germany, Niemoeller, Alexander von Falkenhausen, Kurt von Schuschnigg, Leon Blum, and other political prisoners were transferred to Tirol in Austria by the SS.
On June 5th, 1945, Niemoeller gave a press conference in Naples. He confessed that he had “never quarreled with Hitler over political matters, but purely on religious grounds.” This resulted in a savage attack on Niemoeller from those newspapers that had presented him as a symbol of resistance to Hitler’s government. After the was Niemoeller became one of the Evangelical Church in Germany. After visiting the Soviet Union, Niemoeller joined the World Peace Movement. On his return to Germany he pointed out, “I cannot accept communism, but I must admit that its ideals are very different from ours, which are all tangled up with the most sordid materialism.”
Niemoeller was a strong opponent of nuclear weapons. He thought the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was immoral. He upset the American government when he stated that after Adolf Hitler, he thought that Harry S. Truman “was the greatest murderer in the world.”
On August 7th, 1961, Niemoeller was involved in a car crash. His wife, Else Niemoeller was killed but as soon as he recovered from his injuries he returned to his campaign for world peace. He became an active member of the World Peace Committee and was for seven years president of the World Council of Churches. He also published a book on his political views entitled One World or No World. Niemoeller won several awards for his work for world peace including the Lenin Peace Prize and the Grand Cross of Merit. He married his second wife, Sybil von Sell, in 1971.
On his 90th birthday in 1982, Niemoeller stated that he started his political career as “an ultra-conservative who wanted the Kaiser to come back; and now I am a revolutionary. I really mean that. If I live to be a hundred I shall maybe be an anarchist.” Martin Niemoeller died in Wiesbaden, Germany, on March 6th, 1984.
Resources
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
www.encyclopedia.com

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Mysti Griffith

Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in the small town of Röcken, near Leipzig, within what was then the Prussian province of Saxony. He was born on the 49th birthday of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia and was thus named after him. As a young man, he was particularly vigorous and energetic. In addition, his early piety for Christianity is born out by the choir Miserere which was dedicated to Schulpforta while he attended.
After graduation, in 1864, he commenced his studies in classical philology and theology at the University of Bonn. A brilliant scholar, he became special professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at the uncommon age of 24. Ritschl recommended to the faculty board that Nietzsche be given his doctorate without the typically required dissertation.
When the Franco-Prussian war erupted in 1870, Nietzsche left Basel and, being disqualified for other services due to his citizenship status, volunteered as a medical orderly on active duty. His time in the military was short, but he experienced much, witnessing the traumatic effects of battle and taking close care of wounded soldiers. He soon contracted diphtheria and dysentery and subsequently experienced a painful variety of health difficulties for the remainder of his life.
Upon returning to Basel, instead of waiting to heal, he pushed headlong into a more fervent schedule of study than ever before. In 1872, he published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy in which he denied Schopenhauer's influence upon his thought and sought a "philology of the future" (Zukunftsphilologie). In 1879, Nietzsche retired from his position at Basel. This was due either to his declining health or in order to devote himself fully toward the ramification of his philosophy which found further expression in Human, All-Too-Human. This book revealed the philosophic distance between Nietzsche and Wagner.
From 1880, until his collapse in January, 1889, Nietzsche led a wandering existence as a stateless person, spending most of the summers in Sils-Maria (Engadin) and the winters in French and Italian cities like Nice, Rapallo, Genua and, finally, Turin.
After his mental breakdown, both his sister Elisabeth and mother Franziska cared for him. His fame and influence came later, despite (or due to) the interference of Elisabeth, who published selections from his notebooks with the title The Will to Power, in 1901.
Nietzsche is important as a precursor of 20th-century existentialism, an inspiration for post-structuralism and an influence on postmodernism. Nietzsche's works helped to reinforce not only agnostic trends that followed Enlightenment thinkers, and the biological worldview gaining currency from the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin (which also later found expression in the "medical" and "instinctive" interpretations of human behaviour by Sigmund Freud), but also the "romantic nationalist" political movements in the late 19th century when various peoples of Europe began to celebrate archaeological finds and literature related to pagan ancestors, such as the uncovered Viking burial mounds in Scandinavia, Wagnerian interpretations of Norse mythology stemming from the Eddas of Iceland, Italian nationalist celebrations of the glories of a unified, pre-Christian Roman peninsula, French examination of Celtic Gaul of the pre-Roman era, and Irish nationalist interest in revitalizing the Irish language. Anthropological discoveries about India, particularly by Germany, also contributed to Nietzsche's broad religious and cultural sense.
Nietzsche is famous for:

• his embrace of a sort of a-rationalism which found expression in the idea he called "the Will to Power" (der Wille zur Macht);
• his rejection of morality, in which he felt partly reflected the inverse of the "will to power" and a perversion of useful altruism;
• his attacks on Christianity: the most well-known and frequently misunderstood of his doctrines occurs with the phrase "god is dead" from a passage in The Gay Science titled "The Madman", and similarly is The Antichrist;
• his belief that Christianity planted the seeds of its own eventual demise: Christian notions of truth and the absolute paved the way for rationalism, the Enlightenment and the scientific method, which make blind faith unthinkable for any educated person. Since Martin Luther and Kant, continuing through the Enlightenment, analytical and secular thinking had, he said, significantly replaced Christian theology as a social force and hence the statement "God is dead";
• his origination of the Übermensch concept: translated as "overman", sometimes as "superman", which finally means "over-man" or "through-man" or, in German, "Hindurch-Mensch". There is no adequate English translation, and so each option also doubles as an interpretation of what Nietzsche meant by it. German über is identical with the Latin super;
• his important early concept of "free spirit" that began in Human, All-Too-Human, which may be a starting point for the Übermensch concept;
• his writings on the Eternal Recurrence, while he maintained a philosophical animosity toward its "paralyzing" and nihilistic nature, as a touchstone for the highest possible affirmation of life, of which his Zarathustra embodies.
• his radical critique of 'truth' or more precisely the 'will to truth' led him to reject the stultifying and degenerating dogma of Socratism and Christianity, and to embrace perspectivism. 

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Wolfgang Pauli
Wolfgang Pauli was born in the year 1900 in Vienna. He received his early education in Vienna before studying at the University of Munich. Pauli was outstanding among the brilliant mid-twentieth century school of physicists. He was recognized as one of the leaders when, barely out of his teens and still a student, he published a masterly exposition of the theory of relativity. He obtained his doctor's degree in 1921 as assistant to Max Born and a further year with Niels Bohr at Copenhagen. In 1924, Pauli developed the exclusion principle. In 1928 he was appointed to the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. During 1935-1936, he was a visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey and he had similar appointments at the University of Michigan (1931 and 1941) and Purdue University (1942). He was elected to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at Princeton in 1940 but he returned to Zurich at the end of World War II. In 1945, Wolfgang Pauli received a Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of the Pauli Exclusion Principle.
Besides the Pauli Exclusion Principle, Wolfgang Pauli is known for his work on the Zeeman Effect and his prediction (and eventually, discovery of) of the neutrino. In 1932, Pauli proposed that a particle causing beta decay in Radium had to exist. He called this a "neutrino." In 1958, Wolfgang Pauli died from pancreatic cancer.
• The Pauli Exclusion Principle has three main parts. The first part says that no two electrons can be in the same place at the same time. The second states that an electron can be described by four quantum numbers. The third part of the exclusion principle said that no two electrons in a single atom can have the same set of quantum numbers.
• The Neutrino is an elementary particle with no electric charge and a very small or zero mass emitted during the decay of certain other particles. Wolfgang Pauli theorized that this partical existed more than a quarter century before it was directly observed in 1956.
• The Zeeman Effect, in physics and astronomy, is the splitting of a spectral line into two or more components of slightly different frequency when the light source is placed in a magnetic field.
Pauli helped to lay the foundations of the quantum theory of fields and he participated actively in the great advances made in physics around 1945. Earlier, he had further consolidated field theory by giving proof of the relationship between spin and "statistics" of elementary particles. He has written many articles on problems of theoretical physics, mostly quantum mechanics, in scientific journals of many countries; his Theory of Relativity in the Enzyklopaedie der Mathematischen Wissenschaften, Volume 5, Part 2 (1920), his Quantum Theory in Handbuch der Physik, Vol. 23 (1926), and his Principles of Wave Mechanics in Handbuch der Physik, Vol. 24 (1933).
Sources
http://alumni.imsa.edu/~bunnelle/pauli.html
http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1945/pauli-bio.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Pauli#Biography

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By Adam Watts

Max Planck

Max Planck was born in 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig and died in 1947. He was a theoretical physicist who brought about quantum theory. He was from a family of scholars, and lawyers. He as a child was sent to Munich where he chose a career in Science over another one of his options and passions, music.
He went on to study under brilliant men like H.L.F. von Helmholz and G.R. Kirchoff. He went back in 1879 to get his Doctorate in Munich. He got his doctorate on the Second law of thermodynamics. He was obviously an innovator of his time looking into theoretical physics. He went on to teach at the University of Munich gaining the title of Privat-Dozent. He received many accolades one being the extraordinary professor of Theoretical Physics at Kiel in 1885. He moved on to Berlin becoming Professor of Theoretical Physics there. He stayed in Berlin for the rest of his life. He went on to become president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society there in Berlin.
In 1900 Planck came up with the correct description of thermal radiation these discoveries led to the creation of the field of quantum physics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918.

My three most important points are his bringing about of quantum physics, His description of thermal radiation, and his award for the Nobel Prize

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By Adam Watts

Wilhelm Röntgen

Wilhelm Röntgen was born in 1845 near Düsseldorf and died in 1923 in Munich. He was also a German Physicist that received the first Nobel Prize for Physics in 1901. He discovered X-rays which began to revolutionize diagnostic medicine.
He studied in Zurich and went on to the University of Strasbourg to become a Physics professor. He moved around to many universities until he settled in Munich in 1900. He stayed there for 20 years. He did work on everything from elasticity to specific heats of gases. He while experimenting with electric current noticed that the rays of what he believed was radiation would pass through things like paper, wood, and aluminum. They were transparent to this new radiation. He saw that they affected photographic plates and he thought that they were unrelated to light. He called this phenomenon X- Radiation. He took the first X-rays of the interiors of metal objects and the bones in his wife’s hand.
My three most important points are his discovery of X-rays, How he revolutionized diagnostic medicine, His Nobel Prize the first given for physics in 1901.
I used information for both of these out of the Encyclopedia Britannica 2002.

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Jake Russell
 
  Heinrich Schliemann

Heinrich Schliemann was born in 1822 in Neu Buckow, Germany. He was first interested in the Homeric Troy by his father when he gave him a book named “Illustrated History of the World.� He then concentrated most of his time on school and was considered a promising student. At the age 11 he was sent to a college in Neu Strelitz. But he was forced to leave because of his fathers financial problems. His first job was a grocer. In the shop he learned about Homer in ancient Greece. His first big job came in 1844, as a negotiator for Herr Schroder’s office. Through this job he was able to travel many places. In 1850, Schliemann left for America to get his brothers fortune. With this money he opened a gold dust buying shop, in Sacramento, and became even wealthier. The following year he married Ekaterina Lishin, but eventually divorced her because of distance in their relationship. Later he invested in the indigo trade, in which he eventually controlled it. After his cousins death he concentrated on the words of Homer’s Odyssey where he found comfort in the idea of the hero. His first big find was on the isthmus of the island Greece. He found some vases, a number of sacrificial knifes, and a clay goddess figurine. Next he found, in 1872, his first treasure three golden earrings, and a gold dress pin. Also there he found some burned remains which he thought where from the burning of Troy. In 1876, Schliemann began excavations at Mycenae. He had some initial problems but immediately started to dig at the Lion Gate. But he really did not find much. In 1884, some of Schliemann’s men found the foundation of the Homeric palace. Initially they only found some knifes and arrowheads so this was a big find for him. Finally after an exhausting life of travel and unfortunate family occurrences Schliemann died in 1890, and his body was brought to Naples for burial.
The first important thing I thought that he did was when he found his first artifacts on an isthmus of Greece. This was important for him because it was his first real find and probably made him more interest in finding more Homeric period sites. The next important thing he did was when he found some gold and the remains of some chard bones. This was a great find because for one it made in wealthy and two it made him the first person to uncover stuff from the Homeric period. Finally near the end of his life, in Nauplia at a citadel, he uncovered the foundation of a Homeric palace, along with some knife and arrowheads.
I also got this source from Google and its web sit name is: (http://www.mnsuledu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/schliemann_heinrich.html).

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Mitchell Cunningham

Clara Wieck Schumann
Clara was born in Leipzig on 1819; died in Frankfurt on 1896.Clara Josephine Wieck Schumann, wife of composer Robert Schumann, was one of the leading pianists of the Romantic era as well as a composer. Clara Schumann trained from an early age with her father, the well-known piano pedagogue Friedrich Wieck. She had a brilliant career as a pianist from the age of thirteen up to her marriage; the union between Clara and Robert was initially opposed by her father. She continued to perform and compose after the marriage even as she bore and raised seven children. In the various tours on which she accompanied her husband, she extended her own reputation farther than the outskirts of Germany, and it was thanks to her efforts that his compositions became generally known in Europe. Johannes Brahms, at age twenty, met the couple in 1853 and his friendship with Clara lasted until her death. Later that year, she also met violinist Joseph Joachim who became one of her frequent performance partners. Schumann is credited with refining the tastes of audiences through her presentation of works by earlier composers including those of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven as well as those of Robert Schumann and Brahms.
∑ Her playing was characterized by technical mastery, thoughtful interpretation, poetic spirit, depth of feeling, a singing tone, and strict observance of the composer's markings.
∑ She traveled on 38 concert tours outside Germany.
∑ All her compositions date from 1853 or before, including 29 songs, 3 partsongs, 4 pieces for piano and orchestra, 20 pieces for solo piano, and cadenzas for 3 piano concertos by Beethoven and Mozart; her works are numbered up to Op. 23, with 17 others without opus numbers.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Schumann
http://www.geneva.edu/~dksmith/clara/bio.html

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Jason Broadrick

Carl Schurz
Carl Schurz (1829 -1906) was a German revolutionist, American statesman and reformer, and Union Army general in the American Civil War. He was one of the most famous U.S. citizens of German birth. Schurz was born in Liblar, Prussia, now Erftstadt, the son of a school teacher. He studied at the Jesuit Gymnasium of Cologne, and then entered the University of Bonn, where he became a revolutionary, partly through his friendship with Gottfried Kinkel, then a professor. He assisted Kinkel in editing the Bonner Zeitung, and was active in the Revolution of 1848. He married in July 1852 and moved to America, living for a time in Philadelphia. He then moved to Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1855 and studied law. While there he became a leader in the fight against slavery. He campaigned for Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860. He was then given the position of minister to Spain in 1861. During the Civil War He was appointed brigadier general of volunteers in the Union Army and participated in the Second Battle at Bull Run. After the war ended he resigned from the army as soon as the war ended. After that he became the co-owner of the German-language newspaper, the Westliche Post, in St. Louis, Missouri. He then started the Liberal Republican movement in Missouri in 1870 which elected B. Gratz Brown governor; and in 1872 he presided over the Liberal Republican convention which nominated Horace Greeley for President. He was later elected as a Republican to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1869, to March 3, 1875. He served in the Cabinet of President Rutherford Hayes as Secretary of the Interior 1877-1881. While in this position he established a civil service merit system. He was also an editor of the New York Evening Post and a contributor to Harper’s Weekly. He became president of the National Civil Service Reform League in 1892 and he stayed in this position until 1901. His wife Margaretta Schurz was instrumental in establishing the kindergarten system in the United States.
Three points:
∑ He campaigned for Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860.
∑ He was then given the position of minister to Spain in 1861.
∑ He was later elected as a Republican to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1869, to March 3, 1875. (or) He served in the Cabinet of President Rutherford Hayes as Secretary of the Interior 1877-1881.

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Jason Broadrick

• 
  Werner von Siemens
  Ernst Werner von Siemens (1816-1892), was a German electrical engineer and inventor. He was born in Lenthe, near Hanover, Germany; the fourth child of fourteen of a tenant farmer. He left school without finishing his education, but joined the army to undertake training in engineering at the age of 17. He pursued his scientific studies at the Artillery and Engineers' School in Berlin, and in 1838 obtained an officer's commission. He was co-inventor of an electroplating process in 1841, and alone developed an electric dynamo which made it possible to generate electricity by means of electromagnets instead of permanent magnets. He also invented a telegraph that used a needle to point to the right letter, instead of using Morse code. Based on this invention, he founded the company Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske – later Siemens AG – on October 1, 1847. With this company he laid the first telegraph line and built the first electric railway in Germany and, with his brother Sir William Siemens, developed a widely used process of steelmaking. He also put down telegraph line in Russia with his company. The Siemens unit of electrical conductance was proposed by him. Siemens’ 1866 discovery of the dynamo-electric principle solved the problem of needing DC batteries to generate continuous current and high voltage. The construction of the dynamo established the new age of electricity and clearly charted the course of the company toward a position of world standing. On December 14, 1877 he received German patent No. 2355 for an electromechanical "dynamic" or moving-coil transducer, which was adapted by A. L. Thuras and E. C. Wente for the Bell System in the late 1920s for use as a loudspeaker. In 1884 he founded a research laboratory at Charlottenburg. Following his industrial career, he was ennobled in 1888, becoming Werner von Siemens. He retired from his company in 1890 and died in 1892. Siemens' name has been adopted as the SI unit of electrical conductance, the siemens.
  Three points:
• He was co-inventor of an electroplating process in 1841.
• He developed an electric dynamo which made it possible to generate electricity by means of electromagnets instead of permanent magnets.
• He laid the first telegraph line and built the first electric railway in Germany with his company.
  

Points received from:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_von_Siemens
• http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/siemens.html
• World Book © 2005

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Avery Edwards

Max Weber

• Weber was born in Erfurt, Germany, the eldest of seven children of Max Weber Sr., a prominent politician and civil servant, and his wife Helene Fallenstein. Weber proved to be intellectually precocious. At the age of fourteen, he wrote letters studded with references to Homer, Virgil, Cicero, and Livy, and he had an extended knowledge of Goethe, Spinoza, Kant, and Schopenhauer before he entered university studies. In 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student. In addition, Weber read a great deal in theology.
  Intermittently he served with the German army in Strasbourg. In the fall of 1884 Weber returned to his parents' home to study at the University of Berlin. For the next eight years of his life, interrupted only by a term at the University of Goettingen and short periods of further military training, Weber stayed at his parents' house, first as a student, later as a junior barrister in Berlin courts, and finally as a Dozent at the University of Berlin. In 1886 Weber passed the examination for "Referendar", comparable to the bar examination in the American legal system. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of history. He earned his doctorate in law in 1889 by writing a doctoral dissertation on legal history entitled The History of Medieval Business Organisations. Two years later, Weber completed his "Habilitationsschrift", The Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law. Having thus become a "Privatdozent", Weber was now qualified to hold a German professorship.
  In 1890 the "Verein" established a research program to examine "the Polish question", meaning the influx of foreign farm workers into eastern Germany as local labourers migrated to Germany's rapidly industrializing cities. Weber was put in charge of the study and wrote a large part of its results. The final report was widely acclaimed as an excellent piece of empirical research, and cemented Weber's reputation as an expert on agrarian economics.
  In 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist and author in her own right, who after his death in 1920 was decisive in collecting and publishing Weber's works as books which previously had only appeared as articles in journals. In 1894 the couple moved to Freiburg, where Weber was appointed professor of economics at Freiburg University, before accepting the same position at the University of Heidelberg in 1897.
  In 1904 Max Weber began to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It became his most famous work, and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cultures and religions on the development of economic systems. During the First World War, Weber served for a time as director of the army hospitals in Heidelberg. In 1918 Weber became a consultant to the German Armistice Commission at the Treaty of Versailles and to the commission charged with drafting the Weimar Constitution.
  Max Weber died of pneumonia in Munich on June 14, 1920. It should be noted that many of his works famous today were collected, revised and published posthumously.
  
  
• In 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student. In addition, Weber read a great deal in theology.
• In 1904 Max Weber began to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
• In 1918 Weber became a consultant to the German Armistice Commission at the Treaty of Versailles and to the commission charged with drafting the Weimar Constitution.
  Source: Wikipedia

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