See his monograph, The Essence of Philosophy (tr. 1954); study by R. A. Makkreel (1975).
See study by W. Hofmann (1958).
Furtwängler remained in Germany during World War II and, while he was never a Nazi, his failure to break with the regime led to considerable criticism. After the war he was absolved of a charge of having collaborated with the Nazis. He continued to conduct in Vienna, revived (1951) the Bayreuth Festival, and retained the position of conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic until his death. He was succeeded in Berlin by Herbert von Karajan. Furtwängler was particularly renowned for his interpretations of the music of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Wagner, and Schumann. He was also a composer, following in the German romantic tradition.
See M. Tanner, ed., Notebooks 1924-1954 by Wilhelm Furtwängler (tr. 1989); biography by C. Riess (tr. 1955); P. Pirie, Furtwängler and the Art of Conducting (1980) and J. Hunt, The Furtwängler Sound (1985).
See his selected writings (1960); his autobiography, ed. by M. B. Higgins and R. Chester (tr. 1988); studies by C. Rycroft (1972) and D. Boadella (1974); biographies by W. E. Man and E. Hoffman (1983) and M. Saraf (1984).
See studies by B. Fairley (1961), and I. S. Di Maio (1981).
See E. F. Miller, The Influence of Gesenius on Hebrew Lexicography (1927).
(born March 24, 1897, Dobrzcynica, Galicia, Austria-Hungary—died Nov. 3, 1957, Lewisburg, Pa., U.S.) Austrian-U.S. psychologist. Trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, he joined the faculty of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1924. In The Function of the Orgasm (1927), he argued that the failure to achieve orgasm could produce neurosis. An advocate of sexual education and freedom as well as of radical left-wing politics, he left Germany in 1933 and settled in the U.S. in 1939. After breaking with the psychoanalytic movement in 1934, he developed a pseudoscientific system called orgonomy. He conceived of mental illness and some physical illnesses as deficiency of cosmic energy (measured in units called “orgones”), which he treated by placing the patient in a cabinet with reflective inner surfaces known as the orgone box. Reich's views brought him into conflict with U.S. authorities in the early 1950s; he was convicted of contempt of court and died in prison.
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(born Sept. 2, 1853, Riga, Latvia—died April 4, 1932, near Leipzig, Ger.) Russian-German physical chemist. He moved to Germany in 1887. He wrote the influential Textbook of General Chemistry, 2 vol. (1885–87). With Jacobus H. van't Hoff in 1887 he founded the Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie, which became for many years the most important journal in the field. His work at the University of Leipzig (1887–1906) established it as a great school of physical chemistry. In 1888 he discovered Ostwald's law of dilution of an electrolyte. He gave the first modern definition of a catalyst in 1894 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1909 for his work on catalysis. His process for the conversion of ammonia to nitric acid proved of great industrial importance. He is regarded as one of the founders of the field of physical chemistry.
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Wilhelm Liebknecht, c. 1890
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(born Jan. 4, 1881, Meiderich, Ger.—died March 25, 1919, Berlin) German sculptor, painter, and printmaker. His youthful work was academically realistic, but he grew to admire the works of Auguste Rodin, and in 1910 he moved to Paris, where he produced paintings and lithographs as well as sculptures. He became one of the most important German Expressionist sculptors, best known for his elongated nudes, such as Kneeling Woman (1911), which suggests a resigned pessimism. He returned to Germany at the outbreak of World War I and tended wounded soldiers in a hospital. Seated Youth (1917) reveals his profound depression; he committed suicide two years later.
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(born Sept. 22, 1882, Helmscherode, Ger.—died Oct. 16, 1946, Nürnberg) German field marshal. After serving in World War I, he held administrative posts from 1918 to 1933, after which he became minister of war (1935) and head of the German armed forces high command (1938). Although one of Adolf Hitler's most trusted lieutenants, he was generally regarded as a weak officer and served chiefly as Hitler's lackey. He signed the act of Germany's military surrender in 1945. After the war he was convicted at the Nürnberg trials and executed as a war criminal.
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(born Nov. 19, 1833, Biebrich, Nassau, Ger.—died Oct. 1, 1911, Seis am Schlern, South Tirol, Austria-Hungary) German philosopher of history. Opposed to contemporary efforts to transform the methodology of the humanities and the social sciences on the model of natural science, Dilthey tried to establish these fields as interpretive sciences in their own right. Their subject matter, according to him, is the human mind, not as it is enjoyed in immediate experience nor as it is analyzed in psychological theory, but as it manifests or “objectifies” itself in languages and literatures, actions, and institutions. Dilthey emphasized that the essence of human beings cannot be grasped by introspection but only from a knowledge of all of history; this understanding, however, can never be final because history itself never is. His major work is Introduction to Human Science (1883); two influential essays are “Ideas Concerning a Descriptive and Analytical Psychology” (1894) and “The Structure of the Historical World in the Human Sciences” (1910).
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(born May 22, 1813, Leipzig, Ger.—died Feb. 13, 1883, Venice, Italy) German composer. His childhood was divided between Dresden and Leipzig, where he had his first composition lessons; his teacher refused payment because of his talent. His first opera, The Fairies (1834), was followed by The Ban on Love (1836); the premiere performance was so unprepared that the event was a fiasco, and he henceforth determined not to settle for modest productions. The success of Rienzi (1840) led him to be more adventurous in The Flying Dutchman (1843) and even more so in Tannhäuser (1845). Caught up in the political turmoil of 1848, he was forced to flee Dresden for Zürich. During this enforced vacation, he wrote influential essays, asserting (following G.W.F. Hegel) that music had reached a limit after Ludwig van Beethoven and that the “artwork of the future” would unite music and theatre in a Gesamtkunstwerk (“total artwork”). In 1850 he saw Lohengrin produced. He had begun his most ambitious work, The Ring of the Nibelung, a four-opera cycle. The need for large-scale unity brought him to the concept of the leitmotiv. He ceased work on the Ring's third opera, Siegfried, in the throes of an adulterous love with Mathilde Wesendonk and wrote an opera of forbidden love, Tristan und Isolde (1859), which also seemed to break the bonds of tonality. He published the Ring librettos in 1863, with a plea for financial support, and Louis II of Bavaria responded, inviting Wagner to complete the work in Munich. From the late 1860s to the early 1880s, Wagner completed work on Die Meistersinger, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, and the long-deferred Parsifal, as he also oversaw the building of the great festival theatre at Bayreuth (1872–76) that would be dedicated to his operas. His astonishing works made Wagner one of the most influential and consequential figures in the history of Western music and, indeed, of Western culture. In the late 20th century his undoubted musical stature was challenged somewhat by the strongly racist and anti-Semitic views expressed in his writings, and evidence of anti-Semitism in his operas was increasingly documented.
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(born Sept. 8, 1767, Hannover, Hanover—died May 12, 1845, Bonn) German scholar and critic. He worked as a tutor and wrote for Friedrich Schiller's short-lived periodical Die Horen before cofounding with his brother Friedrich von Schlegel the periodical Athenäum (1798–1800), which became the organ of German Romanticism. While a professor at the University of Jena, he undertook translations of the works of William Shakespeare (1797–1810) that became standard editions and are among the finest of all German literary translations. His Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (1809–11) was widely translated and helped spread fundamental Romantic ideas throughout Europe. From 1818 until his death he taught at the University of Bonn.
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(born Jan. 27, 1775, Leonberg, Württemberg—died Aug. 20, 1854, Bad Ragaz, Switz.) German philosopher and educator. Inspired by Immanuel Kant, in his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) he attempted to unite his concept of nature with the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He held that art mediates between the natural and physical spheres when the natural (or unconscious) and spiritual (or conscious) productions are united in artistic creation. His view that the Absolute expresses itself in all beings as the unity of the subjective and the objective was criticized by G.W.F. Hegel. In Of Human Freedom (1809), he declared that mankind's freedom is real only if it is freedom for both good and evil, a position that forms the basis of his later philosophy. A major figure of post-Kantian idealism, Schelling had an important influence on Romanticism. Seealso Immanuel Kant; Kantianism.
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Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen.
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(born March 31, 1811, Göttingen, Westphalia—died Aug. 16, 1899, Heidelberg, Baden) German chemist. With Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, he observed (circa 1859) that each element emits light of a characteristic wavelength, opening the field of spectrochemical analysis. They discovered several new elements (including helium, cesium, and rubidium) by spectroscopy. His only book discussed methods of measuring volumes of gases. He invented the carbon-zinc battery, grease-spot photometer (see photometry), filter pump, ice calorimeter, and vapour calorimeter. Though often credited with inventing the Bunsen burner, he seems to have made only a minor contribution to its development.
Learn more about Bunsen, Robert (Wilhelm) with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born March 24, 1897, Dobrzcynica, Galicia, Austria-Hungary—died Nov. 3, 1957, Lewisburg, Pa., U.S.) Austrian-U.S. psychologist. Trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, he joined the faculty of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1924. In The Function of the Orgasm (1927), he argued that the failure to achieve orgasm could produce neurosis. An advocate of sexual education and freedom as well as of radical left-wing politics, he left Germany in 1933 and settled in the U.S. in 1939. After breaking with the psychoanalytic movement in 1934, he developed a pseudoscientific system called orgonomy. He conceived of mental illness and some physical illnesses as deficiency of cosmic energy (measured in units called “orgones”), which he treated by placing the patient in a cabinet with reflective inner surfaces known as the orgone box. Reich's views brought him into conflict with U.S. authorities in the early 1950s; he was convicted of contempt of court and died in prison.
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Wilhelm Liebknecht, c. 1890
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(born Jan. 4, 1881, Meiderich, Ger.—died March 25, 1919, Berlin) German sculptor, painter, and printmaker. His youthful work was academically realistic, but he grew to admire the works of Auguste Rodin, and in 1910 he moved to Paris, where he produced paintings and lithographs as well as sculptures. He became one of the most important German Expressionist sculptors, best known for his elongated nudes, such as Kneeling Woman (1911), which suggests a resigned pessimism. He returned to Germany at the outbreak of World War I and tended wounded soldiers in a hospital. Seated Youth (1917) reveals his profound depression; he committed suicide two years later.
Learn more about Lehmbruck, Wilhelm with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born Oct. 18, 1777, Frankfurt an der Oder, Brandenburg—died Nov. 21, 1811, Wannsee, near Berlin) German writer. He served seven years in the Prussian army, and his work first attracted attention when he was in prison accused as a spy. The grim and intense drama Penthesilea (1808) contains some of his most powerful poetry, and The Broken Pitcher (1808) is a masterpiece of dramatic comedy; they were followed by Katherine of Heilbronn (1810), Die Hermannsschlacht (1821), and The Prince of Homburg (1821). In 1811 he published a collection of eight masterly novellas, including Michael Kohlhaas, The Earthquake in Chile, and The Marquise of O. Embittered by a lack of recognition, he ended his unhappy life in a joint suicide with a young woman at age 34. He is now considered the first of the great 19th-century German dramatists, and his disturbing and densely written fictions are widely admired by writers.
Learn more about Kleist, (Bernd) Heinrich (Wilhelm) von with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born Sept. 22, 1882, Helmscherode, Ger.—died Oct. 16, 1946, Nürnberg) German field marshal. After serving in World War I, he held administrative posts from 1918 to 1933, after which he became minister of war (1935) and head of the German armed forces high command (1938). Although one of Adolf Hitler's most trusted lieutenants, he was generally regarded as a weak officer and served chiefly as Hitler's lackey. He signed the act of Germany's military surrender in 1945. After the war he was convicted at the Nürnberg trials and executed as a war criminal.
Learn more about Keitel, Wilhelm with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born Aug. 27, 1770, Stuttgart, Württemberg—died Nov. 14, 1831, Berlin) German philosopher. After working as a tutor, he was headmaster of the gymnasium at Nürnberg (1808–16); he then taught principally at the University of Berlin (1818–31). His work, following on that of Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and F.W. Schelling, marks the pinnacle of post-Kantian German idealism. Inspired by Christian insights and possessing a fantastic fund of concrete knowledge, Hegel found a place for everything—logical, natural, human, and divine—in a dialectical scheme that repeatedly swung from thesis to antithesis and back again to a higher and richer synthesis. His panoramic system engaged philosophy in the consideration of all the problems of history and culture, none of which could any longer be deemed foreign to its competence. At the same time, it deprived all the implicated elements and problems of their autonomy, reducing them to symbolic manifestations of the one process, that of the Absolute Spirit's quest for and conquest of its own self. His influence has been as fertile in the critical reactions he precipitated as in his positive impact. His principal works are Phenomenology of Mind (1807), Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817), and Philosophy of Right (1821). He is regarded as the last of the great philosophical system builders. Seealso Hegelianism.
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(born March 17, 1834, Schorndorf, Württemberg—died March 6, 1900, Cannstatt) German automotive inventor. Trained as an engineer, he cofounded an engine–-building company in 1882. He patented one of the first successful internal-combustion engines in 1885 and was the first to use a gasoline engine to power a bicycle (see motorcycle). Further innovations culminated in 1889 in a commercially feasible four-wheeled automobile. In 1890 the Daimler company was founded at Cannstadt, and in 1899 it produced the first Mercedes car. In 1926 it merged with the company founded by Karl Benz. Seealso Daimler-Chrysler AG.
Learn more about Daimler, Gottlieb (Wilhelm) with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born Aug. 27, 1885, Raudnice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary—died May 29, 1967, Vienna, Austria) German film director. He toured Europe as an actor from age 20 and was directing plays by 1912. He later directed films in Berlin, beginning with The Treasure (1923) and continuing with The Joyless Street (1925), Secrets of a Soul (1926), and The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927). His masterpieces, Pandora's Box (1929) and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), both starred Louise Brooks. Later films include Kameradschaft (1931) and The Threepenny Opera (1931). He moved to France in 1933 and to Austria after World War II. His films were among the most artistically successful of the 1920s, marked by social and political concerns and deep psychological insight.
Learn more about Pabst, G(eorg) W(ilhelm) with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born Aug. 27, 1770, Stuttgart, Württemberg—died Nov. 14, 1831, Berlin) German philosopher. After working as a tutor, he was headmaster of the gymnasium at Nürnberg (1808–16); he then taught principally at the University of Berlin (1818–31). His work, following on that of Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and F.W. Schelling, marks the pinnacle of post-Kantian German idealism. Inspired by Christian insights and possessing a fantastic fund of concrete knowledge, Hegel found a place for everything—logical, natural, human, and divine—in a dialectical scheme that repeatedly swung from thesis to antithesis and back again to a higher and richer synthesis. His panoramic system engaged philosophy in the consideration of all the problems of history and culture, none of which could any longer be deemed foreign to its competence. At the same time, it deprived all the implicated elements and problems of their autonomy, reducing them to symbolic manifestations of the one process, that of the Absolute Spirit's quest for and conquest of its own self. His influence has been as fertile in the critical reactions he precipitated as in his positive impact. His principal works are Phenomenology of Mind (1807), Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817), and Philosophy of Right (1821). He is regarded as the last of the great philosophical system builders. Seealso Hegelianism.
Learn more about Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born Jan. 27, 1775, Leonberg, Württemberg—died Aug. 20, 1854, Bad Ragaz, Switz.) German philosopher and educator. Inspired by Immanuel Kant, in his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) he attempted to unite his concept of nature with the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He held that art mediates between the natural and physical spheres when the natural (or unconscious) and spiritual (or conscious) productions are united in artistic creation. His view that the Absolute expresses itself in all beings as the unity of the subjective and the objective was criticized by G.W.F. Hegel. In Of Human Freedom (1809), he declared that mankind's freedom is real only if it is freedom for both good and evil, a position that forms the basis of his later philosophy. A major figure of post-Kantian idealism, Schelling had an important influence on Romanticism. Seealso Immanuel Kant; Kantianism.
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Bessel, engraving by E. Mandel after a painting by Franz Wolf
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(born Nov. 19, 1833, Biebrich, Nassau, Ger.—died Oct. 1, 1911, Seis am Schlern, South Tirol, Austria-Hungary) German philosopher of history. Opposed to contemporary efforts to transform the methodology of the humanities and the social sciences on the model of natural science, Dilthey tried to establish these fields as interpretive sciences in their own right. Their subject matter, according to him, is the human mind, not as it is enjoyed in immediate experience nor as it is analyzed in psychological theory, but as it manifests or “objectifies” itself in languages and literatures, actions, and institutions. Dilthey emphasized that the essence of human beings cannot be grasped by introspection but only from a knowledge of all of history; this understanding, however, can never be final because history itself never is. His major work is Introduction to Human Science (1883); two influential essays are “Ideas Concerning a Descriptive and Analytical Psychology” (1894) and “The Structure of the Historical World in the Human Sciences” (1910).
Learn more about Dilthey, Wilhelm with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born March 17, 1834, Schorndorf, Württemberg—died March 6, 1900, Cannstatt) German automotive inventor. Trained as an engineer, he cofounded an engine–-building company in 1882. He patented one of the first successful internal-combustion engines in 1885 and was the first to use a gasoline engine to power a bicycle (see motorcycle). Further innovations culminated in 1889 in a commercially feasible four-wheeled automobile. In 1890 the Daimler company was founded at Cannstadt, and in 1899 it produced the first Mercedes car. In 1926 it merged with the company founded by Karl Benz. Seealso Daimler-Chrysler AG.
Learn more about Daimler, Gottlieb (Wilhelm) with a free trial on Britannica.com.
(born March 31, 1811, Göttingen, Westphalia—died Aug. 16, 1899, Heidelberg, Baden) German chemist. With Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, he observed (circa 1859) that each element emits light of a characteristic wavelength, opening the field of spectrochemical analysis. They discovered several new elements (including helium, cesium, and rubidium) by spectroscopy. His only book discussed methods of measuring volumes of gases. He invented the carbon-zinc battery, grease-spot photometer (see photometry), filter pump, ice calorimeter, and vapour calorimeter. Though often credited with inventing the Bunsen burner, he seems to have made only a minor contribution to its development.
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Bessel, engraving by E. Mandel after a painting by Franz Wolf
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Baeyer, 1905
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(born Sept. 8, 1767, Hannover, Hanover—died May 12, 1845, Bonn) German scholar and critic. He worked as a tutor and wrote for Friedrich Schiller's short-lived periodical Die Horen before cofounding with his brother Friedrich von Schlegel the periodical Athenäum (1798–1800), which became the organ of German Romanticism. While a professor at the University of Jena, he undertook translations of the works of William Shakespeare (1797–1810) that became standard editions and are among the finest of all German literary translations. His Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (1809–11) was widely translated and helped spread fundamental Romantic ideas throughout Europe. From 1818 until his death he taught at the University of Bonn.
Learn more about Schlegel, August Wilhelm von with a free trial on Britannica.com.
On February 8, 1841, Duke Wilhelm married Princess Theodelinda de Beauharnais (1814-1857), the daughter of Eugène de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg. Four daughters were born from this marriage:
On February 15, 1863, he married Princess Florestine of Monaco (22 October 1833 France - 4 April 1897 Stuttgart) , daughter of Florestan I, Prince of Monaco, and they had two sons:
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