100 Notable alumni of
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is 27th in the world, 8th in Europe, and 1st in Germany by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 100 notable alumni from the Humboldt University of Berlin sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff. 7 individuals affiliated with the Humboldt University of Berlin won Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry.
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Karl Marx
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- In 1836 studied philosophy and jurisprudence
- Occupations
- writereconomistphilosopherpoliticianjournalist
- Biography
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Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the four-volume Das Kapital (1867–1883). Marx's political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history. His name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory.
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Arthur Schopenhauer
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- Studied in 1811
- Occupations
- writerphilosophermusicologisttranslatoruniversity teacher
- Biography
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Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind noumenal will. Building on the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Schopenhauer developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the contemporaneous ideas of German idealism. He was among the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance. His work has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism.
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Max Weber
- Occupations
- sociologisteconomistanthropologistpoliticianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Maximilian Karl Emil Weber was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profoundly influence social theory and research. While Weber did not see himself as a sociologist, he is recognized as one of the fathers of sociology, along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim.
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Angela Davis
- Occupations
- women's rights activistteacherpolitical prisonerhuman rights activistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Angela Yvonne Davis is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author; she is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She writes extensively on class, gender, race, and the U.S. prison system.
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Erwin Schrödinger
- Occupations
- non-fiction writermathematicianacademicphysicisttheoretical physicist
- Biography
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Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger, sometimes written as Schroedinger or Schrodinger, was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian and naturalized Irish physicist who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theory: the Schrödinger equation provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time.
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Max Planck
- Occupations
- physicistphilosopheruniversity teachertheoretical physicist
- Biography
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Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
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Felix Mendelssohn
- Occupations
- music teacherorganistconductorpainteruniversity teacher
- Biography
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Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music. His best-known works include the overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream (which includes his "Wedding March"), the Italian Symphony, the Scottish Symphony, the oratorio St. Paul, the oratorio Elijah, the overture The Hebrides, the mature Violin Concerto and the String Octet. The melody for the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" is also his. Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are his most famous solo piano compositions.
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W. E. B. Du Bois
- Occupations
- social workerphilosopherpoeteconomistopinion journalist
- Biography
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William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the Friedrich Wilhelm University (in Berlin, Germany) and Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
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Ivan Turgenev
- Occupations
- writertranslatorprosaistpoetnovelist
- Biography
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Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West.
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Sahra Wagenknecht
- Occupations
- journalistnon-fiction writerpoliticianeconomist
- Biography
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Sahra Wagenknecht is a German politician, economist, author, and publicist. Since 2009, she has been a member of the Bundestag for The Left. From 2015 to 2019, she served as the parliamentary co-chair of her party.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- In 1927 graduated with doctorate in theology
- Occupations
- philosopherresistance fightertheologianpoet
- Biography
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential; his 1937 book The Cost of Discipleship is described as a modern classic. Apart from his theological writings, Bonhoeffer was known for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Adolf Hitler's euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of the Jews. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel Prison for one-and-a-half years. Later, he was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp.
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Heinrich Heine
- Occupations
- publicistjournalistpoetliterary criticessayist
- Biography
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Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered a member of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities—which, however, only added to his fame. He spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.
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Mikhail Bakunin
- Occupations
- philosopheranarchistpoliticianwriter
- Biography
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Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a Russian revolutionary anarchist. He is among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major figure in the revolutionary socialist, social anarchist, and collectivist anarchist traditions. Bakunin's prestige as a revolutionary also made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, gaining substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe.
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Walter Benjamin
- Occupations
- writertranslatoressayistsociologistart critic
- Biography
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Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
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Michelle Bachelet
- Occupations
- epidemiologistinternational forum participantpediatricianpoliticiansurgeon
- Biography
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Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria is a Chilean politician who served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2018 to 2022. She previously served as President of Chile from 2006 to 2010 and from 2014 to 2018 for the Socialist Party of Chile. She is the first woman to hold the Chilean presidency. After leaving the presidency in 2010 and before becoming eligible for re-election, she was appointed as the first executive director of the newly established United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. In December 2013, Bachelet was re-elected with over 62% of the vote, surpassing the 54% she received in 2006. She was the first President of Chile to be re-elected since 1932.
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Alfred Wegener
- Occupations
- polar explorergeophysicistastronomerclimatologistexplorer
- Biography
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Alfred Lothar Wegener was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher.
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Wilhelm Wundt
- Occupations
- writerphilosopherpsychologistphysiologistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and biology, was the first person ever to call himself a psychologist. He is widely regarded as the "father of experimental psychology". In 1879, at the University of Leipzig, Wundt founded the first formal laboratory for psychological research. This marked psychology as an independent field of study. By creating this laboratory he was able to establish psychology as a separate science from other disciplines. He also established the first academic journal for psychological research, Philosophische Studien (from 1883 to 1903) (followed by another: Psychologische Studien, from 1905 to 1917), to publish the institute's research.
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Fritz Haber
- Occupations
- engineerchemistacademicuniversity teacherphysicist
- Biography
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Fritz Haber was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber–Bosch process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. This invention is important for the large-scale synthesis of fertilisers and explosives. It is estimated that one-third of annual global food production uses ammonia from the Haber–Bosch process, and that this supports nearly half of the world's population. Haber, along with Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber cycle as a method for evaluating the lattice energy of an ionic solid.
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Edmund Husserl
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- 1878-1881 studied mathematics
- Occupations
- mathematicianphilosopheruniversity teacher
- Biography
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Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of phenomenology.
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Dieter Hallervorden
- Occupations
- television actorcabaret artistwriterfilm actorscreenwriter
- Biography
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Dieter "Didi" Hallervorden is a German comedian, actor, singer, and cabaret artist. He achieved great popularity in German-speaking countries in the mid-1970s with the slapstick series Nonstop Nonsens and his character Didi.
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Emil Cioran
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- Studied in 1933-1935
- Occupations
- writerphilosopheraphoristtranslatordiarist
- Biography
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Emil Cioran was a Romanian philosopher, aphorist and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms. His works frequently engaged with issues of suffering, decay, and nihilism. In 1937, Cioran moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris, which became his permanent residence, wherein he lived in seclusion with his partner, Simone Boué, until his death in 1995.
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Palina Rojinski
- Occupations
- disc jockeyactorfilm actortelevision presentermodel
- Biography
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Palina Rojinski is a Russian-German television presenter and actress based in Germany.
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Joachim Sauer
- Occupations
- university teacherchemist
- Biography
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Joachim Sauer is a German quantum chemist and professor emeritus of physical and theoretical chemistry at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is the husband of the former chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel. He is one of the seven members of the board of trustees of the Friede Springer Foundation, together with former German president Horst Köhler and others.
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Rudolf Virchow
- Occupations
- archaeologistwriteranthropologistbiologistphysician
- Biography
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Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow was a German physician, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, writer, editor, and politician. He is known as "the father of modern pathology" and as the founder of social medicine, and to his colleagues, the "Pope of medicine".
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Herbert Marcuse
- Occupations
- political theoristphilosophersociologistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Herbert Marcuse was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin and then at Freiburg, where he received his PhD. He was a prominent figure in the Frankfurt-based Institute for Social Research – what later became known as the Frankfurt School. He was married to Sophie Wertheim (1924–1951), Inge Neumann (1955–1973), and Erica Sherover (1976–1979). In his written works, he criticized capitalism, modern technology, Soviet Communism, and popular culture, arguing that they represent new forms of social control.
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Heinrich Rudolf Hertz
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- Studied in 1878
- Occupations
- philosopherengineerinventoruniversity teacherphysicist
- Biography
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Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. The unit of frequency, cycle per second, was named the "hertz" in his honor.
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Ernst Haeckel
- Occupations
- physicianexplorerbotanistuniversity teacherwriter
- Biography
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Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms and coined many terms in biology, including ecology, phylum, phylogeny, and Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the influential but no longer widely held recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarises its species' evolutionary development, or phylogeny.
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Ludwig Feuerbach
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- 1824-1826 studied philosophy
- Occupations
- university teacherphilosopherbeekeeperwritercritic of religions
- Biography
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Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book The Essence of Christianity, which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced generations of later thinkers, including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Engels, Richard Wagner, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
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Gustav Stresemann
- Occupations
- politiciandiplomatstatesperson
- Biography
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Gustav Ernst Stresemann was a German statesman who served as chancellor in 1923 (for 102 days) and as foreign minister from 1923 to 1929, during the Weimar Republic.
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Georg Cantor
- Occupations
- mathematicianphilosopheruniversity teacher
- Biography
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Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was a mathematician. He played a pivotal role in the creation of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between the members of two sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are more numerous than the natural numbers. Cantor's method of proof of this theorem implies the existence of an infinity of infinities. He defined the cardinal and ordinal numbers and their arithmetic. Cantor's work is of great philosophical interest, a fact he was well aware of.
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George Santayana
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- university teachernovelistessayistphilosopherpoet
- Biography
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Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana, was a Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the US from the age of eight and identified himself as an American, although he always retained a valid Spanish passport. At the age of 48, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe permanently.
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Hjalmar Schacht
- Occupations
- economistpoliticianbanker
- Biography
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Hjalmar Schacht was a German economist, banker, centre-right politician, and co-founder in 1918 of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic. He was a fierce critic of his country's post-World War I reparations obligations. He was also central in helping create the group of German industrialists and landowners that forced Hindenburg to form the first NSDAP-government.
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Max Stirner
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- 1826-1828 studied geography, philosophy of religion, and logic
- In 1834 studied German, ancient language, religion, and philosophy
- Occupations
- professor of philosophyeducatorphilosopherjournalistwriter
- Biography
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Johann Kaspar Schmidt, known professionally as Max Stirner, was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen as one of the forerunners of nihilism, existentialism, psychoanalytic theory, postmodernism and individualist anarchism.
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Emil Adolf von Behring
- Occupations
- non-fiction writeruniversity teacherbacteriologistphysiologistphysician
- Biography
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Emil von Behring, born Emil Adolf Behring (15 March 1854 – 31 March 1917), was a German physiologist who received the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first one awarded in that field, for his discovery of a diphtheria antitoxin. He was widely known as a "saviour of children," as diphtheria used to be a major cause of child death. His work with the disease, as well as tetanus, has come to bring him most of his fame and acknowledgment. He was honored with Prussian nobility in 1901, henceforth being known by the surname "von Behring."
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Oswald Spengler
- Occupations
- historianphilosophermathematiciansociologistwriter
- Biography
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Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German polymath, whose areas of interest included history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work, The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering human history. Spengler's model of history postulates that human cultures and civilizations are akin to biological entities, each with a limited, predictable, and deterministic lifespan.
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Bernhard Riemann
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- Studied in 1847-1849
- Occupations
- physicistprofessoruniversity teachermathematician
- Biography
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Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann was a German mathematician who made profound contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly known for the first rigorous formulation of the integral, the Riemann integral, and his work on Fourier series. His contributions to complex analysis include most notably the introduction of Riemann surfaces, breaking new ground in a natural, geometric treatment of complex analysis. His 1859 paper on the prime-counting function, containing the original statement of the Riemann hypothesis, is regarded as a foundational paper of analytic number theory. Through his pioneering contributions to differential geometry, Riemann laid the foundations of the mathematics of general relativity. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.
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Gregor Gysi
- Occupations
- lawyerpresenterpoliticianwriter
- Biography
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Gregor Florian Gysi is a German attorney, former president of the Party of the European Left and a prominent politician of The Left (Die Linke) political party.
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Robert Schuman
- Occupations
- lawyerpoliticiandiplomat
- Biography
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Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Robert Schuman was a Luxembourg-born French statesman. Schuman was a Christian democrat (Popular Republican Movement) political thinker and activist. Twice Prime Minister of France, a reformist Minister of Finance and a Foreign Minister, he was instrumental in building postwar European and trans-Atlantic institutions and was one of the founders of the European Union, the Council of Europe and NATO. The 1964–1965 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour. In 2021, Schuman was declared venerable by Pope Francis in recognition of his acting on Christian principles.
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Kurt Zadek Lewin
- Occupations
- economistpsychologistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Kurt Lewin was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. During his professional career Lewin applied himself to three general topics: applied research, action research, and group communication.
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Georg Simmel
- Occupations
- philosophersociologistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Georg Simmel was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.
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Karl Liebknecht
- Occupations
- lawyereditorrevolutionarypolitician
- Biography
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Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht was a German socialist and anti-militarist. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) beginning in 1900, he was one of its deputies in the Reichstag from 1912 to 1916, where he represented the left-revolutionary wing of the party. In 1916 he was expelled from the SPD's parliamentary group for his opposition to the political truce between all parties in the Reichstag while the war lasted. He twice spent time in prison, first for writing an anti-militarism pamphlet in 1907 and then for his role in a 1916 antiwar demonstration. He was released from the second under a general amnesty three weeks before the end of the First World War.
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Felix Jaehn
- Occupations
- disc jockeyrecord producerremixermusicianmanufacturer
- Biography
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Felix Kurt Jähn, known professionally as Felix Jaehn, is a German DJ and record producer specializing in tropical house. He achieved international success with his remix of Omi's song "Cheerleader", which topped the charts in multiple countries and reached number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2015.
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Franziska Giffey
- Occupations
- social scientistpoliticiannon-fiction writer
- Biography
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Franziska Giffey is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who served as Governing Mayor of Berlin from December 2021 to April 2023, the first woman elected to this position. She previously served as Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 until 2021. From 2015 to 2018, she was the mayor of the borough of Neukölln in Berlin.
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Otto Hahn
- Occupations
- autobiographernon-fiction writernuclear physicistchemistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Otto Hahn was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered radioactive isotopes of radium, thorium, protactinium and uranium. He also discovered the phenomena of atomic recoil and nuclear isomerism, and pioneered rubidium–strontium dating. In 1938, Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission, for which Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Nuclear fission was the basis for nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons.
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Martin Buber
- Occupations
- existentialistBible translatorpedagogueliterary editoreducator
- Biography
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Martin Buber was an Austrian Jewish and Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I–Thou relationship and the I–It relationship. Born in Vienna, Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. In 1902, he became the editor of the weekly Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement, although he later withdrew from organizational work in Zionism. In 1923, Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (later translated into English as I and Thou), and in 1925, he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language reflecting the patterns of the Hebrew language.
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Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia
- Occupations
- writercomposerpolitician
- Biography
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Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia was a member of the princely House of Hohenzollern, which occupied the Prussian and German thrones, until the abolition of those monarchies in 1918. He was also noteworthy as a businessman and patron of the arts.
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Alois Alzheimer
- Occupations
- university teacherneuroscientistpsychiatristneurologistphysician
- Biography
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Alois Alzheimer was a German psychiatrist and neuropathologist and a colleague of Emil Kraepelin. Alzheimer is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Kraepelin would later identify as Alzheimer's disease.
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Menachem Mendel Schneerson
- Occupations
- Rebbe
- Biography
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Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known to many as the Lubavitcher Rebbe or simply the Rebbe, was an Orthodox rabbi and the most recent Rebbe of the Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty. He is considered one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the 20th century.
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Hermann von Helmholtz
- Occupations
- ophthalmologistpsychologistbiophysicistphysiologistmusicologist
- Biography
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Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Association, the largest German association of research institutions, is named in his honor.
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Christiane Paul
- Occupations
- actorfilm actormodelstage actor
- Biography
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Christiane Paul is a German film, television and stage actress.
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Theodor Heuss
- Occupations
- politicianjournalistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Theodor Heuss was a German liberal politician who served as the first president of West Germany from 1949 to 1959. His cordial nature – something of a contrast to the stern character of chancellor Konrad Adenauer – largely contributed to the stabilization of democracy in West Germany during the Wirtschaftswunder years. Before beginning his career as a politician, Heuss had been a political journalist.
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Theodor Schwann
- Occupations
- university teacherphysicianbiologistphysiologist
- Biography
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Theodor Schwann was a German physician and physiologist. His most significant contribution to biology is considered to be the extension of cell theory to animals. Other contributions include the discovery of Schwann cells in the peripheral nervous system, the discovery and study of pepsin, the discovery of the organic nature of yeast, and the invention of the term "metabolism".
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György Lukács
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- Studied in 1907
- Occupations
- university teachersociologistphilosopherliterary criticpolitician
- Biography
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György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, literary critic, and aesthetician. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Soviet Marxist ideological orthodoxy. He developed the theory of reification, and contributed to Marxist theory with developments of Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. He was also a philosopher of Leninism. He ideologically developed and organised Lenin's pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution.
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Nikolai Pirogov
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- Studied in 1833
- Occupations
- scientistanatomistsurgeonphysician
- Biography
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Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov was a Russian scientist, medical doctor, pedagogue, public figure, and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1847), one of the most widely recognized Russian physicians. Considered to be the founder of field surgery, he was the first surgeon to use anaesthesia in a field operation (1847) and one of the first surgeons in Europe to use ether as an anaesthetic. He is credited with invention of various kinds of surgical operations and developing his own technique of using plaster casts to treat fractured bones.
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George F. Kennan
- Occupations
- historianuniversity teachergeopoliticiandiplomatpolitical scientist
- Biography
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George Frost Kennan was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States. He was also one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men."
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Kurt Tucholsky
- Occupations
- writerprosaistpoetjuristplaywright
- Biography
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Kurt Tucholsky was a German journalist, satirist, and writer. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Kaspar Hauser (after the historical figure), Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger and Ignaz Wrobel.
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Max Scheler
- Occupations
- philosopheraxiologyanthropologistsociologistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Max Ferdinand Scheler was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers, Scheler developed the philosophical method of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Given that school's utopian ambitions of re-founding all of human knowledge, Scheler was nicknamed the "Adam of the philosophical paradise" by José Ortega y Gasset.
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Zakir Husain
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Zakir Husain Khan was an Indian educationist and politician who served as the third president of India from 13 May 1967 until his death on 3 May 1969.
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Robert Musil
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- 1903-1908 studied philosophy and psychology
- Occupations
- librarianengineeressayistscreenwriterwriter
- Biography
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Robert Musil was an Austrian philosophical writer. His unfinished novel, The Man Without Qualities (German: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), is generally considered to be one of the most important and influential modernist novels.
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Otto Heinrich Warburg
- Occupations
- chemistphysiologistbiochemistphysicianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Otto Heinrich Warburg, son of physicist Emil Warburg, was a German physiologist, medical doctor, and Nobel laureate. He served as an officer in the elite Uhlan (cavalry regiment) during the First World War, and was awarded the Iron Cross (1st Class) for bravery. He was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1931. In total, he was nominated for the award 47 times over the course of his career.
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Walther Rathenau
- Occupations
- art collectorengineerpoliticianscience fiction writerwriter
- Biography
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Walther Rathenau was a German industrialist, writer and liberal politician.
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Karen Horney
- Occupations
- psychotherapistpsychoanalystwriterpsychiatrist
- Biography
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Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst who practised in the United States during her later career. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views. This was particularly true of her theories of sexuality and of the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis. She is credited with founding feminist psychology in response to Freud's theory of penis envy. She disagreed with Freud about inherent differences in the psychology of men and women, and she traced such differences to society and culture rather than biology.
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Wolf Biermann
- Occupations
- singer-songwriterLiedermachercomposerpoetdissident
- Biography
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Karl Wolf Biermann is a German singer-songwriter, poet, and former East German dissident. He is perhaps best known for the 1968 song "Ermutigung" and his expatriation from East Germany in 1976.
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Magnus Hirschfeld
- Occupations
- LGBTQI+ rights activistpsychologistfilm directorphysicianauthor
- Biography
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Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and sexologist.
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Sofia Kovalevskaya
- Occupations
- university teachermathematiciancommunardacademicwriter
- Biography
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Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya, born Korvin-Krukovskaya (15 January [O.S. 3 January] 1850 – 10 February 1891), was a Russian mathematician who made noteworthy contributions to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was a pioneer for women in mathematics around the world – the first woman to obtain a doctorate (in the modern sense) in mathematics, the first woman appointed to a full professorship in northern Europe and one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor. According to historian of science Ann Hibner Koblitz, Kovalevskaya was "the greatest known woman scientist before the twentieth century".
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Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge
- Occupations
- university teacherchemist
- Biography
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Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge was a German analytical chemist. Runge identified the mydriatic (pupil dilating) effects of belladonna (deadly nightshade) extract, identified caffeine, and discovered the first coal tar dye (aniline blue).
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Leó Szilárd
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- In 1922 graduated with Doctor of Philosophy in physics
- Occupations
- science fiction writerengineermolecular biologistnuclear physicistinventor
- Biography
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Leo Szilard was a Hungarian-German-American physicist and inventor. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear fission reactor in 1934, and in late 1939 wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb.
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Lothar de Maizière
- Occupations
- lawyerpoliticianmusician
- Biography
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Lothar de Maizière is a German Christian Democratic politician. In 1990, he served as the only premier of the German Democratic Republic to not be a member of the Socialist Unity Party. He was also the last leader of an independent East Germany.
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Wilhelm Dilthey
- Occupations
- pedagogueliterary criticphilosopherteachersociologist
- Biography
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Wilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, and hermeneutic philosopher, who held G. W. F. Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of scientific methodology, historical evidence and history's status as a science. He could be considered an empiricist, in contrast to the idealism prevalent in Germany at the time, but his account of what constitutes the empirical and experiential differs from British empiricism and positivism in its central epistemological and ontological assumptions, which are drawn from German literary and philosophical traditions.
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Paul Tillich
- Occupations
- philosopheruniversity teachertheologian
- Biography
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Paul Johannes Tillich was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Tillich taught at a number of universities in Germany before immigrating to the United States in 1933, where he taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard Divinity School, and the University of Chicago.
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Hans Speidel
- Occupations
- resistance fightermilitary personnelcareer soldierstudiesuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Hans Speidel was a German general, who was one of the major military leaders of West Germany during the early Cold War. The first full General in West Germany, he was a principal founder of the Bundeswehr and a major figure in German rearmament, integration into NATO and international negotiations on European and Western defence cooperation in the 1950s. He served as Commander of the Allied Land Forces Central Europe (COMLANDCENT) from 1957 to 1963 and then as President of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs from 1964.
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Ram Manohar Lohia
- Occupations
- politicianeconomist
- Biography
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Ram Manohar Lohia pronunciation; (23 March 1910 – 12 October 1967) was an activist in the Indian independence movement and a socialist political leader. During the last phase of British rule in India, he worked with the Congress Radio which was broadcast secretly from various places in Bombay until 1942.
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Ferdinand Lassalle
- Occupations
- writerphilosophereconomistpoliticianlawyer
- Biography
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Ferdinand Lassalle was a Prussian-German jurist, philosopher, socialist and political activist best remembered as the initiator of the social democratic movement in Germany. "Lassalle was the first man in Germany, the first in Europe, who succeeded in organising a party of socialist action", or, as Rosa Luxemburg put it: "Lassalle managed to wrestle from history in two years of flaming agitation what needed many decades to come about." As agitator he coined the terms night-watchman state and iron law of wages.
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Wilhelm Grimm
- Occupations
- children's writerpedagoguelaw librariancollector of fairy talesuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Wilhelm Carl Grimm was a German author and anthropologist, and the younger brother of Jacob Grimm, of the literary duo the Brothers Grimm.
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Lion Feuchtwanger
- Occupations
- journalistwritertranslatorplaywright
- Biography
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Lion Feuchtwanger was a German Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht.
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Ricarda Lang
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- 2014-2019 studied jurisprudence
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Ricarda Lang is a German politician who has been serving as co-leader of the Alliance 90/The Greens since January 2022, alongside Omid Nouripour. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2021. Previously, she was co-deputy leader of the party and spokeswoman for women's policy from 2019 to 2021, and co-leader of the Green Youth from 2017 to 2019.
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Theodor Storm
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- Studied in 1838
- Occupations
- lawyerwriternovelistpoet
- Biography
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Hans Theodor Woldsen Storm, commonly known as Theodor Storm, was a German-Frisian writer. He is considered to be one of the most important figures of German realism.
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Mihajlo Pupin
- Occupations
- university teachermathematicianengineerinventorphysicist
- Biography
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Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin, also known as Michael Pupin, was a Serbian physicist, physical chemist and philanthropist based in the United States.
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Ernst Cassirer
- Occupations
- philosopherart historianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Ernst Alfred Cassirer was a German philosopher. Trained within the Neo-Kantian Marburg School, he initially followed his mentor Hermann Cohen in attempting to supply an idealistic philosophy of science.
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Hermann Minkowski
- Occupations
- mathematicianphysicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Hermann Minkowski was a German mathematician and professor at Königsberg, Zürich and Göttingen. He created and developed the geometry of numbers and used geometrical methods to solve problems in number theory, mathematical physics, and the theory of relativity.
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Stéphanie, Hereditary Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
- Occupations
- aristocrat
- Biography
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Princess Stéphanie, Hereditary Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, is the wife of Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume, the heir apparent to the throne of Luxembourg. She became engaged to the Hereditary Grand Duke on 26 April 2012 and married him, in a civil ceremony, on 19 October 2012, followed by a religious service the next day. The couple have two sons, Prince Charles and Prince François.
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Rudolf Clausius
- Enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin
- Studied in 1840
- Occupations
- physicistuniversity teachermathematiciantheoretical physicist
- Biography
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Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius was a German physicist and mathematician and is considered one of the central founding fathers of the science of thermodynamics. By his restatement of Sadi Carnot's principle known as the Carnot cycle, he gave the theory of heat a truer and sounder basis. His most important paper, "On the Moving Force of Heat", published in 1850, first stated the basic ideas of the second law of thermodynamics. In 1865 he introduced the concept of entropy. In 1870 he introduced the virial theorem, which applied to heat.
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Kurt Eisner
- Occupations
- politicianwriterjournalist
- Biography
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Kurt Eisner was a German politician, revolutionary, journalist, and theatre critic. As a socialist journalist, he organized the socialist revolution that overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria in November 1918, which led to his being described as "the symbol of the Bavarian revolution". He is used as an example of charismatic authority by Max Weber. Eisner subsequently proclaimed the People's State of Bavaria but was assassinated by far-right German nationalist Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley in Munich on 21 February 1919.
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Azmi Bishara
- Occupations
- novelistphilosopheruniversity teacherpolitician
- Biography
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Azmi Bishara is an Israeli Arab public intellectual, political philosopher and author. He is presently the General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
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Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
- Occupations
- mathematicianuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi was a German mathematician who made fundamental contributions to elliptic functions, dynamics, differential equations, determinants, and number theory. His name is occasionally written as Carolus Gustavus Iacobus Iacobi in his Latin books, and his first name is sometimes given as Karl.
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Alfred von Schlieffen
- Occupations
- politicianmilitary officer
- Biography
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Graf Alfred von Schlieffen, generally called Count Schlieffen was a German field marshal and strategist who served as chief of the Imperial German General Staff from 1891 to 1906. His name lived on in the 1905–06 "Schlieffen Plan", then Aufmarsch I, a deployment plan and operational guide for a decisive initial offensive operation/campaign in a two-front war against the French Third Republic.
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Nicolae Iorga
- Occupations
- literary historiangeopoliticianhistorianclassical scholarbiographer
- Biography
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Nicolae Iorga was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, Albanologist, poet and playwright. Co-founder (in 1910) of the Democratic Nationalist Party (PND), he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly and Senate, cabinet minister and briefly (1931–32) as Prime Minister. A child prodigy, polymath and polyglot, Iorga produced an unusually large body of scholarly works, establishing his international reputation as a medievalist, Byzantinist, Latinist, Slavist, art historian and philosopher of history. Holding teaching positions at the University of Bucharest, the University of Paris and several other academic institutions, Iorga was founder of the International Congress of Byzantine Studies and the Institute of South-East European Studies (ISSEE). His activity also included the transformation of Vălenii de Munte town into a cultural and academic center.
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Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
- Occupations
- astronomeruniversity teachernuclear physicistphilosopherphysicist
- Biography
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Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under Werner Heisenberg's leadership. There is ongoing debate as to whether or not he and the other members of the team actively and willingly pursued the development of a nuclear bomb for Germany during this time.
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Hans Modrow
- Occupations
- politicianeconomist
- Biography
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Hans Modrow was a German politician best known as the last communist premier of East Germany.
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Albert A. Michelson
- Occupations
- military officerphysicistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Albert Abraham Michelson FFRS FRSE was a Prussian-born Polish-American physicist of Jewish descent, known for his work on measuring the speed of light and especially for the Michelson–Morley experiment. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, becoming the first American to win the Nobel Prize in a science. He was the founder and the first head of the physics departments of Case School of Applied Science (now Case Western Reserve University) and the University of Chicago.
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Bernhard Grzimek
- Occupations
- zoologistveterinarianphotographerfilm directortelevision presenter
- Biography
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Bernhard Klemens Maria Grzimek was a German zoo director, zoologist, book author, editor, and animal conservationist in postwar West Germany.
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Sven Hedin
- Occupations
- explorerpoliticianbotanistpolitical scientistgeopolitician
- Biography
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Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work.
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Walter Hallstein
- Occupations
- juristdiplomatuniversity teacherpolitician
- Biography
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Walter Hallstein was a German academic, diplomat and statesman who was the first president of the Commission of the European Economic Community and one of the founding fathers of the European Union.
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Carl Ritter
- Occupations
- botanistuniversity teachergeographerexplorer
- Biography
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Carl Ritter was a German geographer. Along with Alexander von Humboldt, he is considered one of the founders of modern geography. From 1825 until his death, he occupied the first chair in geography at the University of Berlin.
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Franz Brentano
- Occupations
- philosopherpsychologistuniversity teacher
- Biography
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Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano was a German philosopher and psychologist. His 1874 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, considered his magnum opus, is credited with having reintroduced the medieval scholastic concept of intentionality into contemporary philosophy.
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Tamara Bunke
- Occupations
- partisanmilitary personneljournalistspyrevolutionary
- Biography
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Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider, better known as Tania or Tania the Guerrillera, was an Argentine-born East German Marxist revolutionary, who played a prominent role in Cuban intelligence operations after the Cuban Revolution and in various Latin American far left revolutionary movements. She fought as a military advisor alongside communist guerrillas led by Che Guevara during the Bolivian insurgency until she was killed in action by CIA-trained and assisted Bolivian Army Rangers.
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Werner Forssmann
- Occupations
- cardiologisturologistphysiologistsurgeonphysician
- Biography
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Werner Theodor Otto Forßmann was a German researcher and physician from Germany who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Medicine (with Andre Frederic Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards) for developing a procedure that allowed cardiac catheterization. In 1929, he put himself under local anesthesia and inserted a catheter into a vein of his arm. Not knowing if the catheter might pierce a vein, he put his life at risk. Forssmann was nevertheless successful; he safely passed the catheter into his heart.
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Alfred Döblin
- Occupations
- writerneurologistessayistplaywrightphysician writer
- Biography
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Bruno Alfred Döblin was a German novelist, essayist, and doctor, best known for his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929). A prolific writer whose œuvre spans more than half a century and a wide variety of literary movements and styles, Döblin is one of the most important figures of German literary modernism. His complete works comprise over a dozen novels ranging in genre from historical novels to science fiction to novels about the modern metropolis; several dramas, radio plays, and screenplays; a true crime story; a travel account; two book-length philosophical treatises; scores of essays on politics, religion, art, and society; and numerous letters—his complete works, republished by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag and Fischer Verlag, span more than thirty volumes. His first published novel, Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lung (The Three Leaps of Wang Lun), appeared in 1915 and his final novel, Hamlet oder Die lange Nacht nimmt ein Ende (Tales of a Long Night) was published in 1956, one year before his death.
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Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff
- Occupations
- professoruniversity teacherengineergeologiststereochemist
- Biography
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Jacobus Henricus "Henry" van 't Hoff Jr. was a Dutch physical chemist. A highly influential theoretical chemist of his time, Van 't Hoff was the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His pioneering work helped found the modern theory of chemical affinity, chemical equilibrium, chemical kinetics, and chemical thermodynamics. In his 1874 pamphlet Van 't Hoff formulated the theory of the tetrahedral carbon atom and laid the foundations of stereochemistry. In 1875, he predicted the correct structures of allenes and cumulenes as well as their axial chirality. He is also widely considered one of the founders of physical chemistry as the discipline is known today.
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Reiner Haseloff
- Occupations
- physicistpolitician
- Biography
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Reiner Haseloff is a German politician who serves as the Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt. On 9 October 2020, he was elected President of the Bundesrat. His one-year term started on 1 November 2020.
