German male non-fiction writers

Franz Hessel (November 21, 1880 – January 6, 1941) was a German writer and translator. With Walter Benjamin, he produced a German translation of three volumes of Marcel Proust's 1913-1927 work À la recherche du temps perdu in the late 1920s.
Hessel's parents, Fanny and Heinrich Hessel, came to Berlin in 1880, and joined the Lutheran church (having been born Jewish). In 1900, when Franz Hessel's father dies, he left a large fortune, enabling Franz Hessel to live a carefree life in Munich and Paris. In 1901, he attends the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he publishes twelve poems in Avalun. Ein Jahrbuch neuer deutscher lyrischer Wortkunst. In 1908, he publishes his first prose prose collection, Laura Wunderl. Müncher Novellen. In 1913, he marries Helen Grund, and publishes Der Kramladen des Glücks. On 27 July 1914, their first son Ulrich is born, and in 1917, their second son Stefan is born. In 1920, he publishes Pariser Romanze. In 1922, he publishes Von den Irrtümern der Liebenden. Eine Nachtwache.Hessel became one of the first German exponents of the French idea of flânerie, and in 1929 published a collection of essays on the subject related to his native Berlin, Walking in Berlin (German: Spazieren in Berlin). Reviewing the book in 1929, Benjamin described it as "an echo of the stories the city has told [Hessel] ever since he was a child—an epic book through and through, a process of memorizing while strolling around, a book for which memory has acted not as the source but as the Muse." Concluding, Benjamin wrote: "if a Berliner is willing to explore his city for any treasures other than neon advertisements, he will grow to love this book."In October 1938, the Hessels flee Germany for exile in Paris. In April 1940, the family flees Paris for Sanary-sur-Mer. In May, Franz and Ulrich are interned in Camp des Milles. On 27 July 1940, both are released and are able to return to Helen in Sanary-sur-Mer. However, Franz has dysentery, and has suffered a stroke, from which he does not recover.: 167–180 Hessel inspired the character of Jules in Henri-Pierre Roche's novel Jules et Jim.

Kurt Hiller (17 August 1885, Berlin – 1 October 1972, Hamburg) was a German essayist, lawyer, and expressionist poet. He was also a political (namely pacifist) journalist.

Hans Sahl (born Hans Salomon, 20 May 1902 in Dresden – 27 April 1993 in Tübingen) was a poet, critic, and novelist who began during the Weimar Republic. He came from an affluent Jewish background, but like many such German Jews he fled Germany due to the Nazis. First to Czechoslovakia in 1933, then to Switzerland, and then France. In France he was interned along with Walter Benjamin. He would later flee Marseille and work with Varian Fry to help other artists or intellectuals fleeing Nazism. From 1941, he lived in New York. In 1952, Sahl became an American citizen. He became known as one of the anti-fascist exiles and in the US translated Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, and Tennessee Williams into German. In 1989, he returned to Germany.

Victor Klemperer (9 October 1881 – 11 February 1960) was a German scholar who also became known as a diarist. His journals, published in Germany in 1995, detailed his life under the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the German Democratic Republic.
The three volumes of his diaries have been published in English translations: I Shall Bear Witness, To the Bitter End, and The Lesser Evil. The first two cover the period of the Third Reich have since become standard sources and have been extensively quoted. His book Lingua Tertii Imperii, published in English as The Language of the Third Reich, studies how Nazi propaganda manipulated and influenced the German language.

Julius Ferdinand Ruska (9 February 1867, Bühl, Baden – 11 February 1949, Schramberg) was a German orientalist, historian of science and educator.
He was a critical scholar of alchemical literature, and of Islamic science, raising many issues on attributions and sources of the texts, and providing translations. The range of his studies was wide, including the Emerald Tablet, a basic hermetic text. From 1924 he headed an institute in Heidelberg, where he has been a student.
Of his seven children, Ernst Ruska and Helmut Ruska were distinguished in their fields.

Karl Holl (15 May 1866 – 23 May 1926) was a professor of theology and church history at Tübingen and Berlin and is considered one of the most influential church historians of his era.

Julius Guttmann (Hebrew: יוליוס גוטמן), born Yitzchak Guttmann (15 April 1880 in Hildesheim – 19 May 1950 in Jerusalem), was a German-born rabbi, Jewish theologian, and philosopher of religion.

Daniel Krencker (15 July 1874, Andolsheim – 10 November 1941, Berlin) was an Alsatian-German architectural historian. He is known for his studies of Roman architecture, in particular, his investigations of its temples (Asia Minor, Syria) and thermal baths.
From 1894 to 1898 he studied architecture at the Technical University at Berlin-Charlottenburg. Later on, he served as a professor of architectural history at the technical university. (from 1922 to 1941). Concurrently, he was an honorary professor of Geschichte der Bau- und Gartenkunst at the agricultural university in Berlin (1930–1941).
Under the direction of Otto Puchstein and Bruno Schulz (1865–1932), from 1900 to 1904, he investigated the ancient Roman ruins at Baalbek and Palmyra. In 1905/06 he was technical manager of an expedition to Aksum (Abyssinia). Later on, he conducted studies at the excavation site of the Hittite capital of Hattusa (Asia Minor, 1907).In 1912 he was appointed head of the architecture department in Quedlinburg, and subsequently put in charge of excavation of the Trier Imperial Baths. He later returned to Asia Minor, where he conducted significant research of the temples at Ankara ("Temple of Augustus and Rome") and Aizanoi. In 1939 he made one last trip to Syria, where he investigated the Monumentalanlage at the Church of Simeon Stylites.

Artur Dinter (27 June 1876 – 21 May 1948) was a German writer and Nazi politician who was the Gauleiter of Gau Thuringia.

Max Bense (7 February 1910 in Strasbourg – 29 April 1990 in Stuttgart) was a German philosopher, writer, and publicist, known for his work in philosophy of science, logic, aesthetics, and semiotics. His thoughts combine natural sciences, art, and philosophy under a collective perspective and follow a definition of reality, which – under the term existential rationalism – is able to remove the separation between humanities and natural sciences.