See his autobiographical works, Upstream (1922) and Mid-Channel (1929).
See studies by W. J. Lillyman (1979) and R. Paulin (1987).
See her memoir, In My Own Voice (1999).
He left Germany in 1937 for the United States, where, from 1938 until his retirement in 1958, he headed the department of architecture at Chicago's Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology), teaching and putting into practice the Bauhaus aesthetic that fused art with technology. There he planned the new campus and designed (1942-58) several of its buildings, notably the superb Crown Hall (1956), home of the architectecture department. During this period he also created some private homes, including the outstanding 1951 Farnsworth House in Plano, Ill., now a state museum. In the 860 Lake Shore Drive apartments in Chicago (1949-51), the Seagram Building in New York (with Philip Johnson; 1956-58), and other buildings, Mies incorporated the principles of the glass skyscraper with a surface expression of steel-frame construction. In doing so he helped create a style that dominated the American urban modernist idiom, but with a perfectionism rarely matched by any other architect. He also experimented with buildings of a single great space, such as the New National Gallery in Berlin (1962-68).
See his works ed. by M. Pawley (1970); biographies by F. Schulze (1985) and Y. E. Safran (2000); studies by P. Johnson (1953), A. Drexler (1960), P. Blake (1964 and 1996), P. Carter (1974), W. Tegethoff (1980), J. Zukowsky, ed. (1986), E. S. Hochman (1989 and 1990), W. Blaser (rev. ed. 1997), E. Stoller (1999), R. Daza (2000), and P. Lambert, ed. (2001).
See his autobiography (1845, tr. 1878).
(born April 26, 1889, Vienna—died April 29, 1951, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.) Austrian-born English philosopher, regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. He was born into an immensely wealthy and cultivated family. In 1908 he went to Manchester, Eng., to study aeronautics. He soon developed an obsessive interest in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, and in 1911 he went to Cambridge to study logic with Bertrand Russell. Within a year he had learned all Russell had to teach; he then went to Norway, where he worked on logic in isolation in a wooden hut he built by the side of a fjord. There he developed in embryo what became known as the “picture theory” of meaning, a central tenet of which is that a proposition can express a fact by virtue of sharing with it a common structure, or “logical form.” When World War I broke out he joined the Austrian army, winning several decorations for bravery while serving on the Russian front. During the war he worked on a manuscript that was later published as Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922). Believing that he had solved all the major problems of philosophy, he abandoned the subject after the war and spent the next 10 years as a schoolteacher and doing other odd jobs in a remote Austrian village. Meanwhile, the Tractatus had attracted the attention of philosophers in Cambridge and Vienna, including those of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists (see logical positivism), some of whose meetings Wittgenstein was persuaded to join. He returned to Cambridge in 1929. During the early 1930s his ideas changed rapidly, and he gradually abandoned the doctrines of the Tractatus; indeed, he began to conceive of philosophy in radically different terms, as not the construction of theories designed to answer philosophical questions but as the activity of clearing up conceptual confusions arising from inattention to or misunderstandings of ordinary uses of language. What became known as the works of the “later Wittgenstein”—including Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956), Philosophical Grammar (1974), Philosophical Remarks (1975), and especially Philosophical Investigations (1953)—can be considered attempts to refine and definitively express this new approach. Though he worked with fierce energy and wrote prodigiously, he would allow none of his work from this period to be published in his lifetime. In 1939 he was appointed to the chair in philosophy at Cambridge previously held by G.E. Moore. Disliking professional philosophy, he resigned the post in 1947 to live in seclusion in Ireland and then with various friends. Diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1949, he continued working intensively until two days before his death. Seealso analytic philosophy.
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(born May 31, 1773, Berlin, Prussia—died April 28, 1853, Berlin) German writer and critic. He was educated at the universities of Halle, Göttingen, and Erlangen. His first works are associated with early Romanticism, the best appealing to the emotions rather than the intellect. Volksmärchen (1797) includes one of his best short novels, Blond Eckbert. This period culminated in the grotesque, lyrical plays Life and Death of St. Genevieve (1800) and Emperor Octavian (1804). Later his writing moved toward realism. While he was an adviser and critic at the Dresden theatre (1825–42), he became a great literary authority.
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(born April 5, 1784, Brunswick, Brunswick—died Oct. 22, 1859, Kassel, Hesse) German composer and violinist. He was kapellmeister in Kassel from 1822 and remained there the rest of his life, eventually directing all the city's music. Highly prolific, he wrote 15 violin concertos, 4 clarinet concertos, many operas (including Jessonda, 1823), 9 symphonies (including The Consecration of Sound, 1832), and chamber music. Highly respected as a performer and composer in the 19th century, he has since been largely neglected.
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(born April 23, 1858, Kiel, Schleswig—died Oct. 4, 1947, Göttingen, W.Ger.) German physicist. He studied at the Universities of Munich and Kiel, then became professor of theoretical physics at the University of Berlin (1889–1928). His work on the second law of thermodynamics and blackbody radiation led him to formulate the revolutionary quantum theory of radiation, for which he received a Nobel Prize in 1918. He also discovered the quantum of action, now known as Planck's constant, math.h. He championed Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, but he opposed the indeterministic, statistical worldview introduced by Niels Bohr, Max Born, and Werner Heisenberg after the advent of quantum mechanics. As the influential president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (later the Max Planck Society) until his resignation in 1937, he appealed to Adolf Hitler to reverse his devastating racial policies. His son was later implicated in the July Plot against Hitler and was executed.
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(born March 7, 1839, Kassel, Hesse-Kassel—died Dec. 11, 1909, London, Eng.) German-British chemist and industrialist. After immigrating to England in 1862, he improved the Solvay process for making sodium carbonate (soda ash) and developed a process for extracting nickel from its ores. He was a founder of the important chemical firm Brunner, Mond and Co. and of the Mond Nickel Co.
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The Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Chicago, designed by Mies van der Rohe; photographed in 1955
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Felix Mendelssohn, watercolour by James Warren Childe, 1829; in a private collection
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(born April 23, 1858, Kiel, Schleswig—died Oct. 4, 1947, Göttingen, W.Ger.) German physicist. He studied at the Universities of Munich and Kiel, then became professor of theoretical physics at the University of Berlin (1889–1928). His work on the second law of thermodynamics and blackbody radiation led him to formulate the revolutionary quantum theory of radiation, for which he received a Nobel Prize in 1918. He also discovered the quantum of action, now known as Planck's constant, math.h. He championed Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, but he opposed the indeterministic, statistical worldview introduced by Niels Bohr, Max Born, and Werner Heisenberg after the advent of quantum mechanics. As the influential president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (later the Max Planck Society) until his resignation in 1937, he appealed to Adolf Hitler to reverse his devastating racial policies. His son was later implicated in the July Plot against Hitler and was executed.
Learn more about Planck, Max (Karl Ernst Ludwig) with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(baptized Dec. 17, 1770, Bonn, archbishopric of Cologne—died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria) German composer. Born to a musical family, he was a precociously gifted pianist and violist. After nine years as a court musician in Bonn, he moved to Vienna to study with Joseph Haydn and remained there for the rest of his life. He was soon well known as both a virtuoso and a composer, and he became the first important composer to earn a successful living while forsaking employment in the church or court. He uniquely straddled the Classical and Romantic eras. Rooted in the traditions of Haydn and Mozart, his art also encompassed the new spirit of humanism expressed in the works of German Romantic writers as well as in the ideals of the French Revolution, with its passionate concern for the freedom and dignity of the individual. His astonishing Third (Eroica) Symphony (1803) was the thunderclap that announced the Romantic century, and it embodies the titanic but rigorously controlled energy that was the hallmark of his style. He began to lose his hearing from circa 1795; by circa 1819 he was totally deaf. For his last 15 years he was unrivaled as the world's most famous composer. In musical form he was a considerable innovator, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto, and string quartet. His greatest achievement was to raise instrumental music, hitherto considered inferior to vocal, to the highest plane of art. His works include the celebrated 9 symphonies; 16 string quartets; 32 piano sonatas; the opera Fidelio (1805, rev. 1814);2 masses, including the Missa Solemnis (1823); 5 piano concertos; a violin concerto (1806); 6 piano trios; 10 violin sonatas; 5 cello sonatas; and several concert overtures.
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(born March 7, 1839, Kassel, Hesse-Kassel—died Dec. 11, 1909, London, Eng.) German-British chemist and industrialist. After immigrating to England in 1862, he improved the Solvay process for making sodium carbonate (soda ash) and developed a process for extracting nickel from its ores. He was a founder of the important chemical firm Brunner, Mond and Co. and of the Mond Nickel Co.
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The Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Chicago, designed by Mies van der Rohe; photographed in 1955
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(born April 26, 1889, Vienna—died April 29, 1951, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.) Austrian-born English philosopher, regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. He was born into an immensely wealthy and cultivated family. In 1908 he went to Manchester, Eng., to study aeronautics. He soon developed an obsessive interest in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, and in 1911 he went to Cambridge to study logic with Bertrand Russell. Within a year he had learned all Russell had to teach; he then went to Norway, where he worked on logic in isolation in a wooden hut he built by the side of a fjord. There he developed in embryo what became known as the “picture theory” of meaning, a central tenet of which is that a proposition can express a fact by virtue of sharing with it a common structure, or “logical form.” When World War I broke out he joined the Austrian army, winning several decorations for bravery while serving on the Russian front. During the war he worked on a manuscript that was later published as Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922). Believing that he had solved all the major problems of philosophy, he abandoned the subject after the war and spent the next 10 years as a schoolteacher and doing other odd jobs in a remote Austrian village. Meanwhile, the Tractatus had attracted the attention of philosophers in Cambridge and Vienna, including those of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists (see logical positivism), some of whose meetings Wittgenstein was persuaded to join. He returned to Cambridge in 1929. During the early 1930s his ideas changed rapidly, and he gradually abandoned the doctrines of the Tractatus; indeed, he began to conceive of philosophy in radically different terms, as not the construction of theories designed to answer philosophical questions but as the activity of clearing up conceptual confusions arising from inattention to or misunderstandings of ordinary uses of language. What became known as the works of the “later Wittgenstein”—including Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956), Philosophical Grammar (1974), Philosophical Remarks (1975), and especially Philosophical Investigations (1953)—can be considered attempts to refine and definitively express this new approach. Though he worked with fierce energy and wrote prodigiously, he would allow none of his work from this period to be published in his lifetime. In 1939 he was appointed to the chair in philosophy at Cambridge previously held by G.E. Moore. Disliking professional philosophy, he resigned the post in 1947 to live in seclusion in Ireland and then with various friends. Diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1949, he continued working intensively until two days before his death. Seealso analytic philosophy.
Learn more about Wittgenstein, Ludwig (Josef Johann) with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born Feb. 4, 1897, Fürth, Ger.—died May 5, 1977, Bonn, W.Ger.) German economist and politician. As economics minister (1949–63), he was the chief architect of West Germany's postwar economic recovery. He achieved what has been called an economic miracle through his “social market system,” which was based on free-market capitalism but included special provisions for housing, farming, and social programs. In 1957 he was appointed federal vice-chancellor, and in 1963 he succeeded Konrad Adenauer as chancellor. His government was troubled by an economic downturn and a budget deficit, as well as Erhard's relative weakness as a leader, and he was forced to resign in 1966.
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German theatrical family. Ludwig Devrient (1784–1832) was the greatest actor of the Romantic period in Germany. At the Dessau court theatre he developed his talent for character parts. After his Berlin debut in The Robbers (1814), he played Falstaff, Shylock, King Lear, and Richard III to great acclaim. His eldest nephew, Karl August Devrient (1797–1872), acted in Dresden, Karlsruhe, and principally Hannover (1839–72), where he was popular in plays by Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller. Karl's brother Eduard (1801–77) began his career as an opera singer, then worked as an actor and stage director in Dresden (1844–52) and Karlsruhe (1852–70), where he directed German classics and made new translations of Shakespeare's plays. Karl's other brother, Emil (1803–72), made his stage debut in 1821 and acted with the Dresden court theatre (1831–68); his greatest successes were as Hamlet and as Goethe's Tasso. Eduard's son Otto (1838–94) acted in various companies, then became a director in Karlsruhe and other German cities. In Weimar he produced his own version of Goethe's Faust (1876); he also wrote several tragedies. Karl's son Max (1857–1929) made his debut in Dresden in 1878 and in 1882 joined the famed Vienna Burgtheater.
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(born June 29, 1880, Biebrich, Ger.—died July 20, 1944, Berlin) German general. After serving with the army general staff in World War I, he was later chief of the general staff (1935–38). He opposed Adolf Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland and resigned to protest the decision to conquer Czechoslovakia. He helped plan the unsuccessful July Plot to assassinate Hitler; when it failed, Beck committed suicide.
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(born July 28, 1804, Landshut, Bavaria—died Sept. 13, 1872, Rechenberg, Ger.) German philosopher. The son of an eminent jurist, he studied under G.W.F. Hegel in Berlin but later abandoned Hegelian idealism for a naturalistic materialism. In Thoughts on Death and Immortality (1830), he attacked the concept of personal immortality. His Abelard and Heloise (1834) and Pierre Bayle (1838) were followed by On Philosophy and Christianity (1839), in which he claimed that “Christianity has in fact long vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind.” In The Essence of Christianity (1841), he proposed that God is merely the outward projection of mankind's inward nature. Some of his views were later endorsed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
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Street, Berlin, oil on canvas by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1913; in the elipsis
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(born Aug. 11, 1778, Lanz, Brandenburg, Prussia—died Oct. 15, 1852, Freyburg an der Unstrut, Prussian Saxony) German educator who founded the Turnverein (gymnastic club) movement in Germany. As a teacher in Berlin from 1809, he began a program of outdoor exercise for students. He invented the parallel bars, rings, balance beam, horse, and horizontal bar, all of which have become standard equipment for gymnastics. In 1819 he came under suspicion for his fervent nationalism and strong influence on youth. He was arrested and imprisoned for almost a year; his gymnastic club closed, and a national ban was placed on gymnastics (lifted in 1842). He was awarded the Iron Cross for military bravery (1840) and served in the national parliament (1848–49).
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(born Aug. 11, 1778, Lanz, Brandenburg, Prussia—died Oct. 15, 1852, Freyburg an der Unstrut, Prussian Saxony) German educator who founded the Turnverein (gymnastic club) movement in Germany. As a teacher in Berlin from 1809, he began a program of outdoor exercise for students. He invented the parallel bars, rings, balance beam, horse, and horizontal bar, all of which have become standard equipment for gymnastics. In 1819 he came under suspicion for his fervent nationalism and strong influence on youth. He was arrested and imprisoned for almost a year; his gymnastic club closed, and a national ban was placed on gymnastics (lifted in 1842). He was awarded the Iron Cross for military bravery (1840) and served in the national parliament (1848–49).
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(born Nov. 8, 1848, Wismar, Mecklenburg-Schwerin—died July 26, 1925, Bad Kleinen, Ger.) German mathematician and logician, inventor of modern mathematical logic and one of the founders of the analytic tradition in philosophy. He taught at the University of Jena from 1871 to 1917. His Begriffsschrift (1879, “Conceptscript”), was the first presentation of a system of mathematical logic in the modern sense. Using an original notation of quantifiers and variables, he was able to give formal expression to sentences containing multiple quantification, such as “Everybody loves someone”; this is impossible in the syllogistic derived from Aristotle, which had been considered complete until the time of Immanuel Kant (see predicate calculus). In the Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik he attempted to establish the doctrine later known as logicism. He also made significant contributions to the philosophy of language, including a highly influential theory of the distinction between sense and reference. Though Frege's work was admired by Bertrand Russell and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein, it was unknown to or ignored by most other philosophers and mathematicians during Frege's lifetime; its significance was not generally appreciated until the mid-20th century.
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(born July 28, 1804, Landshut, Bavaria—died Sept. 13, 1872, Rechenberg, Ger.) German philosopher. The son of an eminent jurist, he studied under G.W.F. Hegel in Berlin but later abandoned Hegelian idealism for a naturalistic materialism. In Thoughts on Death and Immortality (1830), he attacked the concept of personal immortality. His Abelard and Heloise (1834) and Pierre Bayle (1838) were followed by On Philosophy and Christianity (1839), in which he claimed that “Christianity has in fact long vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind.” In The Essence of Christianity (1841), he proposed that God is merely the outward projection of mankind's inward nature. Some of his views were later endorsed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
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Street, Berlin, oil on canvas by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1913; in the elipsis
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(born Feb. 4, 1897, Fürth, Ger.—died May 5, 1977, Bonn, W.Ger.) German economist and politician. As economics minister (1949–63), he was the chief architect of West Germany's postwar economic recovery. He achieved what has been called an economic miracle through his “social market system,” which was based on free-market capitalism but included special provisions for housing, farming, and social programs. In 1957 he was appointed federal vice-chancellor, and in 1963 he succeeded Konrad Adenauer as chancellor. His government was troubled by an economic downturn and a budget deficit, as well as Erhard's relative weakness as a leader, and he was forced to resign in 1966.
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(baptized Dec. 17, 1770, Bonn, archbishopric of Cologne—died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria) German composer. Born to a musical family, he was a precociously gifted pianist and violist. After nine years as a court musician in Bonn, he moved to Vienna to study with Joseph Haydn and remained there for the rest of his life. He was soon well known as both a virtuoso and a composer, and he became the first important composer to earn a successful living while forsaking employment in the church or court. He uniquely straddled the Classical and Romantic eras. Rooted in the traditions of Haydn and Mozart, his art also encompassed the new spirit of humanism expressed in the works of German Romantic writers as well as in the ideals of the French Revolution, with its passionate concern for the freedom and dignity of the individual. His astonishing Third (Eroica) Symphony (1803) was the thunderclap that announced the Romantic century, and it embodies the titanic but rigorously controlled energy that was the hallmark of his style. He began to lose his hearing from circa 1795; by circa 1819 he was totally deaf. For his last 15 years he was unrivaled as the world's most famous composer. In musical form he was a considerable innovator, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto, and string quartet. His greatest achievement was to raise instrumental music, hitherto considered inferior to vocal, to the highest plane of art. His works include the celebrated 9 symphonies; 16 string quartets; 32 piano sonatas; the opera Fidelio (1805, rev. 1814);2 masses, including the Missa Solemnis (1823); 5 piano concertos; a violin concerto (1806); 6 piano trios; 10 violin sonatas; 5 cello sonatas; and several concert overtures.
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(born June 29, 1880, Biebrich, Ger.—died July 20, 1944, Berlin) German general. After serving with the army general staff in World War I, he was later chief of the general staff (1935–38). He opposed Adolf Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland and resigned to protest the decision to conquer Czechoslovakia. He helped plan the unsuccessful July Plot to assassinate Hitler; when it failed, Beck committed suicide.
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