Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke (22 March 1771 – 27 June 1848) was a German, later Swiss, author and reformer. Most of his life was spent, and most of his reputation earned, in Switzerland. He had an extensive civil service career, and wrote histories, fiction and other works which were widely known.
Gustav Regler (25 May 1898 – 14 January 1963) was a German writer and journalist.
Hans Blumenberg (born 13 July 1920, Lübeck – 28 March 1996, Altenberge) was a German philosopher and intellectual historian.
He studied philosophy, German studies and the classics (1939–47, interrupted by World War II) and is considered to be one of the most important German philosophers of the century. He died on 28 March 1996 in Altenberge (near Münster), Germany.
Blumenberg created what has come to be called "metaphorology", which states that what lies under metaphors and language modisms, is the nearest to the truth (and the farthest from ideologies). His last works, especially "Care Crosses the River" (Die Sorge geht über den Fluss), are attempts to apprehend human reality through its metaphors and involuntary expressions. Digging under apparently meaningless anecdotes of the history of occidental thought and literature, Blumenberg drew a map of the expressions, examples, gestures, that flourished in the discussions of what are thought to be more important matters. Blumenberg's interpretations are extremely unpredictable and personal, all full of signs, indications and suggestions, sometimes ironic. Above all, it is a warning against the force of revealed truth, and for the beauty of a world in confusion.
Franz Carl Müller-Lyer, born Francis Xavier Hermann Müller (5 February 1857 - 29 October 1916) was a German psychologist and sociologist. The Müller-Lyer illusion is named after him.
Armin Theophil Wegner (October 16, 1886 – May 17, 1978) was a German soldier and medic in World War I, a prolific author, and a human rights activist. Stationed in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Wegner was a witness to the Armenian genocide and the photographs he took documenting the plight of the Armenians today "comprises the core of witness images of the Genocide.": 258–259 In the years following World War I, Wegner also voiced his opposition, at great risk to his own life, to the antisemitic policies of the Nazi regime. In 1933, he authored an impassioned plea to Adolf Hitler on behalf of German Jews. He suggested that the persecution of the Jews was not just a question of "the fate of our Jewish brothers alone, [but also] the fate of Germany.": 240 Noting that he was writing the letter as a proud German who could himself trace his Prussian familial roots back to the time of the Crusades, Wegner asked Hitler what would become of Germany if it continued its persecution of Jews. Answering his own question, Wegner declared, "There is no Fatherland without justice!": 244 He was persecuted by the Nazi regime and fled after being released from a concentration camp.
After leaving Germany, Wegner lived the rest of his life in Italy. He was later recognized for his anti-genocide efforts, including recognition by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. His story and his pictures have featured in multiple later efforts to document the Armenian genocide.
Rolf von Sydow (18 June 1924 – 16 June 2019) was a German film director and author.
Georg Michael Anton Kerschensteiner (July 29, 1854 in München – January 15, 1932 in München) was a German professor and educational theorist. He was director of public schools in Munich from 1895 to 1919 and became a professor at the University of Munich in 1920. The author of Theorie der Bildungsorganisation (1933), Kerschensteiner is primarily known for developing a pragmatic approach to education, which included the integration of academic study with physical activity and the establishment of a network of vocational schools.
Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch (28 October 1867 – 17 April 1941) was a German biologist and philosopher from Bad Kreuznach. He is most noted for his early experimental work in embryology and for his neo-vitalist philosophy of entelechy. He has also been credited with performing the first artificial 'cloning' of an animal in the 1880s, although this claim is dependent on how one defines cloning.
Peter Bamm (a pen name; his real name was Curt Emmrich; 20 October 1897 in Hochneukirch, now part of Jüchen, Germany – 30 March 1975 in Zollikon, Switzerland) was a German writer.
Peter Bamm volunteered for military service in World War I, after which he studied medicine and sinology in Munich, Göttingen and Freiburg im Breisgau. As a ship's doctor he travelled the world a great deal before eventually settling in Berlin-Wedding.
During World War II he served as a military doctor on the Russian Front, and later described his experiences in the book "Die Unsichtbare Flagge" (The Invisible Flag). After the war he travelled for study purposes between 1952 and 1957 in the Near and Middle East, after which he wrote as a journalist and feature writer for a number of Berlin newspapers.
He is buried in the Stöcken Cemetery in Hanover.
Eduard Spranger (27 June 1882 – 17 September 1963) was a German philosopher and psychologist. A student of Wilhelm Dilthey, Spranger was born in Berlin and died in Tübingen. He was considered a humanist who developed a philosophical pedagogy as an act of 'self defense' against the psychology-oriented experimental theory of the times.Spranger was the author of the book Lebensformen (Translated as Types of Men), which sold 28,000 copies by the end of 1920. Spranger theorizes that types of human life are structures in consciousness. His belief was that personality types have a basis in biology, but can not be fully explained by biology. He wrote, "On a lower level, perhaps, the soul is purely biologically determined. On a higher level, the historical, for instance, the soul participates in objective values which cannot be deduced from the simple value of self-preservation." He criticized psychologists who reduced the psyche and society to abstract elements of science. Another characteristic of Spranger's thought is his interest in holism, which involves the discovery that "everything is part of everything else," and that the "totality of mind is present in every act." He asserts that quantitative calculations of sensations, reflexes, and citations from memory are meaningless units, that when synthesized, do not add up to the meaningful whole that we all live.