What he found in 1740, when he was after the death of his father King of Prussia, who were incoherent countries: East Prussia, Brandenburg and possessions on the Rhine. The young man had long since realized that was not done with this Prussian state. He wanted to change. The occasion was found, died suddenly than in Vienna, the German Emperor and his young daughter, Maria Theresa became ruler of the Habsburg lands. Frederick took advantage of this opportunity, and fell in December of 1740 for the first time with his army in Silesia and occupied Breslau. This was not a glorious campaign. A second and third followed. Only then was able to fully concentrate on his Frederick bled the country. "I am" as he put it, "the first servant of my country." So he conceived of his kingly office and acted upon.

"In my state, anyone can be saved in his own way!" Even this was true. In Prussia, all that had to wander off at will from their homelands of the faith found a new home. Frederick II founded in Berlin, the Academy of Sciences, introduced compulsory education and press freedom. He wanted in his state, the enlightenment, enabling the intellectual independence of its subjects, and as far as he could, he realized it, too.

In its foreign policy, he never lost sight of the great power of Prussia. He had created them and paid with the loneliness of the last section of his life. Only his dogs and his bodyguard were in the last days of life with him when he left hinausgeleiten on the terrace of his palace Sanssouci. This castle, he had himself designed, and the great builder and architect Knobelsdorf he had built, Brandenburg on a sand hill. Here, on the terrace of Sans Souci, he wanted to be buried. The tomb was prepared for this. But it turned out differently. His successor did not abide by the will, he had put the coffin into the Garrison Church at Potsdam.

The time runs since the death of Frederick II, 17 August 1786 rolled up to Germany and brought new limits. And so it happened that the coffin was Frederick the Great to 1993 in the chapel of the castle Hohenzollern in Hechingen, Württemberg. The race of Hohenzollern had begun on the Hohenzollern. From there she moved out of Nuremberg, Tangermünde to Berlin and Potsdam. Here on the Hohenzollern today he has again found his final resting place.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Germany's greatest poet

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on the 70th Birthday (Image: Wikimedia Commons - Stieler, Joseph Karl (1781-1858) - Public Domain)

Goethe was the most famous German poet and one of the most famous poets of the world. He has created the largest and finest literary works of art and very many wise and proper knowledge.

Goethe was a highly gifted man, and life long favored by fortune. He was born in 1749 in Frankfurt and grew up in affluent circumstances. His father was an educated man who led his life according to strict principles, without ever having learned a real job. His mother, however, was a happy, cheerful woman with warmth, humor and imagination. Both properties had inherited his parents' son.

In Leipzig and Strasbourg, Goethe studied at the request of his father's law. In his Strasbourg period falls to his love of the young Friederike Brion in Sesenheim in Alsace. Goethe was able to dress all of his emotions - love, sadness, pain - effortlessly into words. He has also written of his relationship with Friederike most beautiful love poems.

After graduating, Goethe was a lawyer in Frankfurt, but without that he would have made his job fun. He would much rather have been an independent writer. But this work could not feed him.

Goethe has loved many women in his life. They gave him time and again rise to new seals. But he first married any of them. He wanted to keep his freedom, his independence. Frederica, and many others he has made miserable when he left her.

Sturm und Drang period

The following year, now known as "storm and stress", in which people feel more stressed than the intellect, as in the previous explanation. Now Goethe wrote his first play, the passionate "Götz von Berlichingen", and some years later, the tragedy "Egmont". From his unhappy love for the fiancee of a friend out of the novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther," Goethe was made world famous. Some young men took up with unrequited love because of the novel as Werther's life.

1775, the young Duke Karl August of Weimar, Goethe appointed as a minister at his residence. For the poet now began a life of strict fulfillment of duty in the service of a small duchy. To Frau von Stein he was held in Weimar, a motherly girlfriend. It emerged narrative poems (ballads =) as "The Erl King" and "The Fisherman". But not until the later friendship with the poet Friedrich Schiller suggested Goethe's poetic creativity, and again strongly.

The serene classics

With Goethe's journey to Italy (1786-88) began his "classic" period. The plays of these years as "Iphigenia" and "Torquato Tasso" is no longer solely emphasize the feeling. Rather, the feeling of the mind should be tamed and refined. More particularly, the man develop into a morally more perfect being.

After his return from Italy, Goethe, Christiane Vulpius took a young woman into his house, whom he married in 1806, finally. She bore him several children, of whom only his son August, but remained alive.

Goethe became gradually more and more famous. People from many countries made the pilgrimage to Weimar and showed him their worship. But he withdrew more and more back from the people and their opinions. He built his own world of beauty and ideal forms. He did research in nature and dealt with their great fundamental laws.

As levied in Germany and Europe, the nations against Napoleon's domination, he forbade his son to participate in the freedom struggle. He admired Napoleon as a great man, but he also hated war and bloodshed. The emerging national and democratic ideas, he was opposed.

End of life

Even Goethe in his old age took hold again and again the passion for beautiful and intelligent women. From his relationship with Marianne von Willemer the "West-Eastern Divan was created. Until a great age - he died in 1832 at the age of almost 83 years - Goethe was a amazing creative power. His memoirs he wrote in his book "Poetry and Truth". Shortly before his death he completed the 2nd Part of the drama "Faust", which belongs to world literature. In the person of his fist, he describes the way of people looking out of the confusion of life, to the knowledge of eternal and divine purpose: Working for the good of humanity, service to the community. Then the fist is up in the "sky" given with the words: "Whoever strives striving that we can deliver."

Self-redemption

Goethe saw everywhere in the world, a divine power at work, especially in important people and the laws of nature. BC, he had great reverence. Goethe's view, every person carries a divine spark within themselves. So that it can develop its own power to a more perfect human being. Therefore man is good at its core. This view characterizes Goethe as a humanist.

But just today we can see from the many horrors in this world as imperfect and evil man is and remains. And who is honest to himself, must before many bad scare into himself and his thoughts. He must recognize that there is a self-redemption, as Goethe proclaimed not to give.

That is why Jesus was the Son of God come into our world and die for us on the cross. In it we meet God's love and his will to redeem us. If we enfold Jesus in our life, He forgives us our wickedness, our sin and makes us into new people into our affairs.

Heinrich Heine - a poet and fighter

In 1997, we thought of the 200th Birthdays of the German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). Heine is known abroad than in Germany, for there were times when many German Heine declined because of his political beliefs, but also because he was a Jew.

A romantic at the bank counter

Heinrich Heine was born in 1797 in Dusseldorf on the Rhine. Where his father was a merchant. Heine loved his parents very much.

After leaving school he learned from a rich uncle in Hamburg, who owned a bank. But the job of the banker did not suit him. He much preferred writing poetry.

In Bonn, and Göttingen Heine then studied law. He would later pursue a career in the service of the state. During his studies he came over from the Jewish to the Christian faith and was baptized. He did so but only because he hoped that as a Christian rather get a job with the state, as if he were a Jew.

However, as a Christian found Heine in Germany, the State does not have employment. It was also because of the state because he criticized the situation in Germany.

A great poet

On the one hand Heine was a poet. He wrote very beautiful, simple poems. Not a few of them were set to music and German folk songs, such as "I do not know, what should it mean ...".

That was the time of Romanticism. They emphasized the feeling of the imagination. So also Heine's poems often deal with love and beautiful and noble sentiments. We see the girl, for example, the following poem to a:

You're like a flower,
so sweet and nice and clean.
Here's looking at you, and sadness
creeps into my heart.

I feel as if I were the hands
you shall put on his head,
praying that God will receive
so pure and beautiful and sweet.

A fighter for freedom and justice

On the other hand Heine was also a fighter for freedom, democracy and justice and for all hungry for bread.

At that time the princes, the nobility and the wealthy manufacturer much more possession and a lot more political rights than ordinary people. Heine took the aristocrats so sharply in his writings, eg In his travel books. He called for equal rights for all people. Sometimes he overdid it and was too hurtful and unjust. He scoffed at in witty and ironic way, all unnatural and loggerhead in the coexistence of people.

The churches supported Heine's time is often the nobility and the wealthy. They did not care that in the cities, millions of factory workers were suffering great hardship. Many priests preached that by God, as if God is a friend of the rich would be, and what is not true, because Jesus was a friend of the poor and not the rich.

Therefore Heine also attacked the churches. He criticized and even ridiculed God, as the churches of God preached: as a friend of the rich.

Germany is closely Heine

Finally, Heine's life in Germany was too narrow. His writings were banned or censored, threatened to arrest him. So he moved to Paris in 1831. In France at that time there was more freedom than in Germany.

Here trying to Heine in his writings for an understanding between France and Germany. Even though he sometimes almost hated Germany - secretly he loved all his life. This shows, for example, the following poem:

I once had a beautiful country.
The oak tree
there grew so high, the violets gently nodded --
It was a dream.

It also kissed me in German and spoke in German
one (believe it,
how good it sounded) the words "I love you" --
It was a dream.

A Life in Paris

In Paris, married the poet Mathilde, a young Frenchwoman. It was a simple girl with no special training. So many love affairs Heine had previously also been - by now, he clung faithfully and with great love to his wife. Heine studied in Paris, Karl Marx also know and appreciate.

Heinrich Heine loved and enjoyed life. He was confident and even a little vain. He was never very successful. But he had through his books and his uncle in Hamburg is always enough money to live.

Drawn by a serious illness

But some of Heine's 35th Year of life was found in him a serious illness, a spinal tuberculosis. In this way his body was paralyzed more. His last years he was completely immobile in bed, in his "mattress grave". He was almost blind, and often suffered great pain. But his mind was, until his death awake and alive.

Though Heine felt it his whole life is right for democracy and human rights struggle. But at the end of his life he often doubted at a progress of mankind. And we do not now see how right he was? Due to the great freedom that people have donated to date anywhere in the world, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Unemployment, crime, drug abuse and anarchy are on the rise. Man can not just make you happy on their own, and humanity. For this he needs God.

Return to God

So Heine returned to his last years to God. He said: "I'm back from infidelity to God. I now believe in a personal God, the wise kind, and is fair. I know when I die, have my suffering to an end. Then I go to God, to me will give much pleasure. "

At the end of his life, Heine had a lot to read from the Bible and from the books of a pious German theologians. From newspapers, he wanted nothing more. He died at peace with God. In Paris, he is buried

Robert Koch - fighter against germs and bacteria

What many scientists and doctors did not succeed with all its institutes and laboratories, found a small, poor country doctor from Poznan. He was able to demonstrate that certain diseases are caused by specific pathogens. He found these pathogens, grew them in his laboratory and worked out methods to combat it. He laid the foundation for public health through hygiene and disinfection and sterilization in medicine.

A Prussian country doctor

Robert Koch was born on 11 December 1843 in Clausthal in the resin as the third of 13 children. His father worked in mining. Robert Koch was the first high school and then studied mathematics and then medicine in Gottingen. His motto even in this time was: "Never idle!" 1866 Robert Koch was an assistant in Hamburg. There, at that time, many people died from cholera. 1870-71 he went as a doctor of civil war to the front. Subsequently, he became a doctor in the vicinity of Poznan and married.

Beginning of a researcher's life

At this time the anthrax was raging among the cattle in Europe, and many animals died. This disease was Robert Koch get to the bottom. He saved a lot of money for a microscope and analyzed so that dead animals. He took millions of anthrax, the clogged in long chains or aggregated the entire body of the animal. Even after years of silence, the spores of this bacterium was able to develop new anthrax. 1876 Koch published his research at the University of Wroclaw. Because we now know what these bacilli are necessary for life, one was able to fight them successfully. The greatest discovery in the field of the bacteria had been successful.

A new science: bacteriology

His success led Robert Koch to conduct further research in the field of wound infection to. For many people died when they were operated on. Koch was able to color the different bacteria with different colors, so they were even visible. Thus he discovered that the surgical instruments were sterilized, and so not often people in the operation came in contact with bacteria.

As a council member at the Imperial Health Office, Robert Koch had the opportunity to perform along with many other research assistants. They succeeded him in 1882, demonstrating the tubercle bacillus. This was the climax of his scientific career. Also, the causative agent of diphtheria and typhoid fever have been explored by his assistants. Expeditions took him all over the world. In India, he found the cholera bacillus and fought it through the pollution of drinking water. By uncovering the lives of the bacteria and Koch's methods of research, he set the stage for medical science, all the previously inexplicable and hard to deal with infectious diseases can be prevented or treated effectively and more effectively.

In 1891 he became director of the Institute for Infectious Diseases, which had been erected for him and later received the name of Robert-Koch-Institut. His fame went throughout the world. 1905 was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine awarded. Koch died on 27 May 1910 in Baden-Baden.

Daimler and Benz built the car

A carriage without horses

By 1885, Daimler invented Reitwagen
Germany is car country. With 80 million inhabitants in Germany there are 50 million cars. A dense network of excellent highways and motorways, "covers the land. We call this car also of Germans' favorite toy. " This is certainly not surprising, because the car was invented in Germany. People have always had dreamed of a vehicle that "self", ie "auto-mobile" (Greek autos 'self', Latin mobilis "movable") goes from a vehicle, therefore, not taken from humans or animals or is driven by the wind.
With the invention of the steam engine, such self-propelled vehicles had become possible. The pressure heated steam into energy for driving a vehicle is converted. Thus arose in the 19th Century throughout Europe and the United States of steam powered railways. But there were also isolated by steam moving buses, ships and carriages.

The internal combustion engine

A steam-powered engine is big and heavy. In addition, he barely one tenth of the converted coal as a fuel in the amount of heat contained in available energy. It was necessary to always take great coal reserves on trips.

Thus they sought in the 19 Century, a small, easy to use for small motor vehicles, who won from its fuel much energy as possible. The many small then emerging industries and of agriculture required for such a motor.

Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz
It is surprising that two men simultaneously, but completely independently, developed such an engine: the two Germans, Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) and Karl Friedrich Benz (1844-1929). They worked only one hundred kilometers away from each other: Daimler Benz in Stuttgart and Mannheim, both located in the southwest of Germany in the modern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Yet they have never changed a word to each other, not even in writing.
Both developed a so-called incineration or combustion engine: the ignition of tiny amounts of gasoline in a cylinder with the spark of a spark plug creates a stronger Explosionsstoß that sets in motion a piston. If such small explosions follow one another quickly, the resulting energy to drive a vehicle. As this process takes place in four stages, this motor also called four-stroke engine.

Daimler's road to a new engine

Gottlieb Daimler come from Schorndorf near Stuttgart. Initially he ran with the inventor Nicolaus August Otto (1832-1891) a machine factory in Cologne. Otto had already received an internal combustion engine constructed (Today's gasoline engine is also named after him). But this was built by Otto engine was still too big and too heavy to be able to install it in vehicles. He also drew its energy from the ongoing explosion of tiny amounts of gas. Gas then existed only in larger cities.

Therefore, Daimler developed in Stuttgart Otto's invention in more detail at a small, lightweight motor that could be built into vehicles. He chose gasoline as fuel (kerosene), which was relatively low fuel consumption, which one could go so well over longer distances.

It was a difficult path for Daimler. Again and again in his attempts the petrol exploded prematurely in the cylinder of the engine. This was not only dangerous for Daimler. But that made him at times almost despair of ever developing an engine that struck in the right moment for himself.

Finally, in 1885, Daimler had done it. He had invented the first engine that could be fit well in all vehicles and ran smoothly.

How soon became Daimler's engine in many countries to power cars, boats, sleds and bicycles used. Daimler's first car in 1885 with his new engine was a so-called "riding car", a kind motorcycle. It had) 0.5 hp (horsepower and reached a speed of six kilometers per hour.

Benz built the first car

Motor car by Benz (1886)
Karl Friedrich Benz, born in Karlsruhe, wanted to develop not only as Daimler, a new engine for a variety of vehicles. But he had from the beginning to build the entire car in sight.
Benz was also a gifted and tenacious inventor. In his workshop in Mannheim, he turned the petrol combustion engine developed by a serviceable car engine. In many ways was superior to its engine Daimler engine.

At the same time he constructed the other parts, without which a car can not drive: the ignition of gasoline by a strong electrical spark through water cooling the engine, the clutch, steering and more.

1886 was his "car" is ready. It was shaped like a coach on three wheels, 0.9 hp and had made a lot of noise and smell - like all early cars. Soon Benz built his cars then with four wheels.

This first "car" by Benz from the year 1886 is the prototype of the car. It was the first time a car that went without any difficulties. Its basic components are now used in all cars in the world.

The triumph of cars

The first cars were in the shape of a horse with an engine installed one) (yes attaches to this day the power of an engine in "horsepower" = hp.

Daimler with his son on his motor car
Daimler also quickly build such "motor carriages". These cars were the first not more than about two to three horsepower, reaching speeds of more than 15 to 20 kilometers per hour. They were all made by hand. They were very expensive and only rich could therefore afford a car. Nevertheless, more and more people have such a new vehicle. From the workshops of Daimler Benz in Mannheim and Stuttgart evolved over time, a large auto factories.
Once made, the wife of Benz and her two boys on a motor coach of her husband, even a well-respected advertising trip from Mannheim to Pforzheim (Distance 70 km). Perhaps it was the first woman at the helm! She had to go, even while her garter as a sacrifice for insulating material. Her husband had known about this trip at all.

In other countries, for example in France, England and Italy, we soon began to produce cars. The motor coaches were given a roof, the body was created. More and more developed the car to its present form.

Very soon they began to carry out car racing. Also because the car was becoming more popular. Today is the car in many countries, a mass transportation means.

The Mercedes car

Racers at the starting line
A car dealer in France was one day the German Daimler cars after his daughter's name "Mercedes". Since arriving from Stuttgart Daimler cars carry the name. Your character is a star with three rays surrounded by a circle.
In 1926, the two car plants of Daimler and Benz were the two oldest car factories in the world, united in a large factory in Stuttgart. It bears the name "Mercedes Benz". Today it provides well-equipped cars in all parts of the world. After the merger with the American company Chrysler, the name of Benz will not appear again. The new company then hot "Daimler-Chrysler."

The car - now a problem?

The car has the dream of people from a self-propelled vehicle achieved. By car you can get there at any time, anywhere. It is thus in a sense independent of time and space.

But this ideal mode today with its stress on the environment creates major problems. That is why some people want to abolish liked the car back or restrict its use greatly.

But without a car you can imagine the lives of people anywhere. Therefore, it is the car in some form always exist. Only we will increasingly have to seek to construct and build cars that pollute as little as possible.

God says in the Bible to us humans: "Take possession of the earth" (1. Genesis 1:28). By car, the man met a piece of that contract. But God also says: "We should preserve the earth to protect them from harm and as God's good creation (1.Mose get 2.15). And the urgent solution of this problem, man must work with great effort.

Thomas Mann - citizens and artists

Thomas Mann is one of the most important novelists of the 20th German language Century, but he hated the Germans because they had brought Hitler to power and drove him into exile in the United States, where he lived from 1939 to 1952. At the same time he always felt as a German. He had grown up here. He loved Germany and its culture.

Citizens ...

Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was born in the old commercial city of Lübeck on the Baltic Sea 1875th He came from a distinguished family. His father was a merchant and alderman ..

Thus, Thomas Mann has always felt as a citizen. Be a citizen meant to him: be healthy in life, act sensibly, be diligent and make money, have to be a natural man with warmth and humor, ethics, stand up for humanity and democracy.

All of this was Thomas Mann, he was married, loved his wife, with whom he had six children, he was an industrious writer, the well-deserved and dignified living, and he stood up for reason and humanity. During the war he held by the United States for the Germans against Hitler speeches.

... And artists
At the same time, however, as Thomas Mann said, especially the artistically gifted people often experience something special, extraordinary, for example, a great love. Only then can an artist create a great work of art. It breaks through the man but the civil orders (eg if it enters into another marriage). Although he is happy doing it, he can thus produce great works of art. But he also often destroyed in the process itself

In contrast to healthy people, therefore, the artist, although a sensitive, brilliant, but also a sick man, a loner. He is a brother of criminals and madmen. "

Thomas Mann did remain in the orders of the bourgeoisie. They gave him security and gave him joy in life. But he always felt the dangers of the artist, for example, the danger of homosexuality.

In many of his stories and novels of Thomas Mann describes the extraordinary people, the "artist". His first major book, The Buddenbrooks (1901) made him famous. It is his most widely read and most-loved book. He received the Nobel Prize. He relates to the decline of a Lübeck family over four generations (his own) of healthy, successful businessman to the sensitive and vulnerable artist.

In his novel The Magic Mountain 1924) (he sees the whole of European culture threatened by decay. In Joseph and His Brethren (1926-1942) while Joseph is also a brilliant individuals, but creates new, saving ordinances. In Dr. Faustus (1947), the great artist ends in madness.

Many people in the novels of Thomas Mann perish externally or internally, as well as in his family, his two sisters and two of his children died by suicide, many were drug addicts and homosexual.

From his works it is evident that Thomas Mann did not know God. Who gives his life in the hands of God, not have to go into the dangers of life is based. God can save us in all dangers, if we stick to it.

Thomas Mann is the world's most famous contemporary German writers. It follows the narrative techniques of the 19th Century, especially on the sweeping style of writing of Leo Tolstoy. He writes an exemplary German. He tells interesting, always with a bit of sarcasm and irony. Mann's novels, short stories and novels reflect the complex intellectual, cultural and social sensitivities of the 20 Century in their changing, partly in direct relation contemporary history, partly historically clothed.

His books are distributed worldwide in about 10 million copies. His brother Henry, left-standing, is a prominent writer. Most members of the family man was a writer.

His last years spent in Switzerland, Thomas Mann. He died there in 1955th

Immanuel Kant - a great philosopher

(When the Russian troops in 1945 Konigsberg now Kaliningrad) in East Prussia, extending conquered, they protected the tomb of the philosopher Kant Two hundred years ago, he died. Kant was perhaps the greatest philosopher of modern times.
Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Konigsberg. He grew up in a religious home. His father was a simple craftsman. With 46 years Kant was a professor of metaphysics at the University of Konigsberg.

A thorough thinker

Kant was a profound thinker, and so he asked: "What we can see from the things around us and how we can do that? He discovered that knowledge arises from the fact that we are unconnected things of the outside world through our human mind in order to make understandable. For example, with the help of space and time and cause and effect. The Kant describes in his essay "Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant is saying that man can with his mind, his reason is not everything. It depends on the things of the outside world. But the outside world, matter, not even mastered the man. Man can arrange through his mind, get a grip.

In this way, Kant to reconcile idealism and materialism. He overcame so that the Enlightenment of the 18th Century, and helped by the emergence of German classicism.

God, just a "supreme being"?

In his essay "Critique of Practical Reason," Kant says: "God, man can not see, however, neither the nature nor in history, for he can not see God, yes. Yet there must be God, because everyone knows about good and evil. There must be someone who once punished evil and rewarded the good. That is God. "Therefore, man must also possess immortality.

Although Kant demanded reverence for God and the Bible, but God was for him only the creator of the world. With everyday life, God has little to do. Jesus as the mediator with God, Kant did not know. Kant had only a weak, vague idea of God. Religion was mostly for him morality. With his "categorical imperative," Kant taught a strict ethics.

But God is not just a requirement of morality. Rather it is a living person. Already on the wonderful design of nature, we recognize God's greatness and vitality. And anyone who believes in God, always feel again how God speaks to him, answering his prayers, acts in his life.

Kant's impact is still enormous, both directly and indirectly, but positively or negatively. In Germany they speak little of God as a living, experiential person, not even in theology. For many, God is just a mere thought, a vague "supreme being". This is with in Kant

A quiet life

Kant loved order. He rose daily at five clock in the morning. When a pen or a pair of scissors were only slightly shifted from its place or if a chair was not at his usual place, he became restless and desperate. After his walk at the same time his neighbors put their clocks. Konigsberg has rarely leave Kant, East Prussia never.

Kant was not married. He said that unmarried young men to stay longer, "perhaps because they do not (married to) take into yoke" was. But in spite of his pedantic way Kant a happy man. He was fond of gay conversation among his friends and liked to joke. In 1804 he died . His last words were: "It is good."

Bonhoeffer - a theologian and resistance fighter

Many people around the world know the name of Bonhoeffer. He died 60 years ago in the struggle against the Hitler regime.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer could have led a good life. In 1906 he was in a fashionable middle-class family born in Breslau. His father was a renowned professor of psychiatry in Berlin. Dietrich was richly endowed, at age 21 he was already a doctor of theology. He could have become a famous professor of theology. He enjoyed the finer things in life: art, good food, travel.

Succession

As he read the Bible, the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: God wants us to obey him completely. Then he decided for God and for his fellow human beings live. He said: "There are fulfilling lives in spite of many unfulfilled desires." So he began working as a pastor in Berlin in the service of the Evangelical Church.

Especially the suffering people were Bonhoeffer's heart. In the years after 1930 million people were unemployed in Germany, many starved and froze. Bonhoeffer asked: "The church must be the church for others".

In 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany. He promised the people work and bread. Millions cheered him. Even in the churches he had supporters. But he ruled with terror and murder. He fought against the Jews.

Bonhoeffer rejected so from the Nazi regime. He was against war and for peace between peoples. He gathered together with others in the evangelical church committed to the Bible Christians in the "Confessing Church". Many Christians and pastors sent to concentration camps, some were killed.

A hard road

1939, Hitler began the 2nd World War II. Soon Bonhoeffer: By Hitler recognized are still millions of people die in war and in concentration camps. So he decided to cooperate with others to kill Hitler. Hitler's assassination seemed to be a smaller debt to God, than to let millions of people killed by Hitler.

Bonhoeffer was willing to sacrifice his life. But he wondered whether he could endure torture and death if they would arrest him. However, he said to himself: "God gives us in any emergency as much resistance as we need. But he gives them to us in advance so we do not rely on ourselves but on God."

1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested. But could not prove any great sin. In prison in Berlin, he could even write letters to his family and his fiancee. These letters collected by his friend later in the famous book "Resistance and resignation." Bonhoeffer in prison a lot of thought about how you can speak to the modern unbelieving people about God.

Mechthild of Magdeburg - met the love of God

Magdeburg, the City of Otto the Great, has a 1,200 years of turbulent history. On the history of the city is also a woman whose name is closely connected with the city: Mechthild of Magdeburg. She was born 800 years ago in a castle in the Magdeburg area and was - unusually for those days for girls - a comprehensive education. Even as a young girl she left the castle and openly confessed: "My living is not the nobility. God has other, bigger plans for me." God was for them not simply a higher power, but a real loving you. This personal relationship with God filled her life so that she had to write down everything that moved them into the depths of her heart. A great sense Mechthild transforming power of prayer. She writes: "The prayer makes a bitter sweet heart, happy sad heart, a poor heart rich, a foolish heart wise, a timid heart brave, strong with a weak heart, a heart blind to see. It attracts the great God in a small heart. It drives the hungry soul up to the god of wealth. "

Mechthild does not choose the path to the monastery, but closes at the Magdeburg poverty movement, true to its intent: "What is God's hope, that I dare. I was drawn to the love of God into the city." The words of Jesus: "the poor will proclaim the Gospel" (Matthew 11:5) had deeply touched her. She turns the poorest of the poor: the outcast, the sick, the dying, widows and orphans. She gives them human and spiritual support, and - as far as it is possible - it also relieves the material and physical needs. Mechthild does this service alone. At that time, formed in Magdeburg, a sister movement. The young women live in shared accommodation, share their possessions with each other. Since they are not subordinate to the official regulations of the church, they had to endure many insults and hostility. Young women living alone, which was then considered scandalous. Mechthild, however, was a confident, courageous woman who encouraged her sisters again to continue their work among the needy. A lot of support and comfort she received from her confessor, under whose influence she wrote her book "The flowing light of God." This work was highly controversial during his lifetime by Mechthild: A woman, especially without a university education, writes in German, not in Latin - the language of scholars - a book about their experiences with God and God's love. That was unusual, even more: that the Church seemed to be too dangerous. Vanished as her work for centuries in oblivion.

Mechthild of Magdeburg was a visionary. But their visionary abilities were not world-flight. She lived with God in this world. With their gift of inner vision of God shows lines that God and the world combine. When reading Mechthild's writings one gets the impression that she was a surviving contemporary and not a woman who has worked 800 years ago. Mechthild writes: "The love bids me. What they want is what is to be done, and what God his hope, that I dare."

With a holy, loving attention Mechthild reads the Bible. She writes:

"From the way of love is to me no abortion. A sacred attention to God we should carry at all times in us."

The life of Mechthild of Magdeburg, is perceptible that the great love can be to God in simple love and mercy to his fellow men a reality which is "what is God's hope."

Friedrich Nietzsche - fighting against God

The crows scream
and pull whizzing flight to the city.
Soon it will snow --
woe to him who has no home!

These lines are from a poem written by a man who "had no home," because he had broken away from God, Friedrich Nietzsche (from 1844 to 1900).

Nietzsche was raised in a Christian home. His father was an evangelical pastor. At his confirmation, he believed firmly and wholeheartedly in God. But later at the high school, he gave up his faith. He knew of God and separated from him anyway. He became a fighter against God. "God is dead," he preached.

A critical thinker

Nietzsche was exceptionally talented and has already got 24 years in Basel, a professor of philology. In numerous writings he initially opposed all scientific theorizing, all the overvaluation of the "reason", all philistines. Instead, he called for a powerful affirmation of life. From the Dionysian frenzy of affection arises all true creation.

His most important works are: "The Birth of Tragedy", "Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil," "Antichrist" and "The Will to Power." He writes vivid and lifelike.

Homeless

Lou Salomé, Paul Ree and Friedrich Nietzsche 1882 (Image: Wikimedia Commons - Public domain)

Because of increasing pain tormenting the head and eyes, Nietzsche did retire in 1879, abandoning his professorship.

Christians confess that God is our "castle", a refuge in times of need (Psalm 91.2). In him we find "shelter", a "home" in sickness and Zerbruch. Nietzsche was, however, in his distance from God "homeless." He took after his retirement, a restless, wandering life in Switzerland, northern Italy, on the Riviera, constant improvement and cure in vain search of his health.

Nietzsche's exterior was matched by his inner homelessness. Everyone needs a role model, an ideal to which he can hold on, look up to where he can. Our only sure footing in life can not be a man, but God alone. All other models and sizes are man-made idols. You let us down sooner or later. Yes, they can, as in Nietzsche, cause a person's life and terrible destruction in the world.

Nietzsche had abandoned the God who created for himself to replace the "super-man," the master race. He put the man in the place of God. He preached the idea of the training and upbringing of new human elite stratum.

Destruction of all values

This new master race is not bound by any ethical standards. He is "the free, beautiful beast," says Nietzsche. This new man is to enjoy life with all senses. The "body" is to prevail against the "spirit".

Because the Christian compassion disrupts the joy in life, Nietzsche rejects as "slave morality" as a consolation here is too short comers to the afterlife.

Compared with the elite men is the mass of the people nothing but "the vermin of the earth's crust" (which can be avoided as you want). Hence, Nietzsche also rejected democracy and socialism.

The honorable man affirms his fate, even if it is meaningless, and gives him a sense (which is the basic idea of the later Heidegger and Sartre, existentialism).

Nietzsche fought against the entire Western Christian values, thanks to which Europe and the whole world their moral principles and their culture. Millions of young people were particularly criminal captured by Nietzsche's ideas. Nietzsche thus became the intellectual forerunner of Nazism. What he preached, the Nazis put into practice in a terrible manner.

Nietzsche has seduced millions of people. His fight against God has clearly demonic and anti-Christian traits.

"Without God everything is permitted"

We can see Nietzsche and his fate: Without God we are internally and often externally displaced. Our life depends on our reverence for God.

Nietzsche thought that the new boss man without God would bring about a new culture and enjoy higher highest happiness. The opposite was the case. The realization of his ideas by the Nazis led to the destruction of all culture in many countries in Europe and the indescribable suffering of millions of people.

Dostoevsky once said: "If there is no God, everything is permitted", up to the Holocaust and the destruction of all culture. Nietzsche is the best example.

Nietzsche, the atheist, who died in extreme "homelessness". The last twelve years of his life, he dawned mentally deranged meaning DHER no longer lived in full consciousness.

Max Planck and the discovery of quantum theory

102 years ago, that the German physicist Max Planck made his great discovery. Who is this man, and why its discovery was so important?
Planck, 1858 born, came from a family of scholars. He was very talented. Despite his great skill, he was a modest and gentle man. Before and after 1 World War Planck decades professor of physics at the University of Berlin. There then taught many famous physicists, for example, Albert Einstein. Planck had brought him to Berlin and was close friends with him.

Planck's constant

In 1900 Planck discovered the so-called named after him, "Planck's constant, known in physics since h with the letter. What is it?

When a body is heated, it gives off energy in the form of heat and light. Scientists had believed that this energy would be given continuously, ie without interruption. It was thought that "nature makes no leaps."

Now Planck discovered that energy is not continuous from one body, but is made in leaps, in "packets", called "quanta". This made the amount of energy (quanta are) always a multiple of Planck's constant h, ie, multiplied by h.

Energy is not so, as we previously believed, in the quantities delivered 1,2,3,4,5 etc.. But it is assumed that given h 2, in the quantities 2 (2 times 1), 4 (2 times 2), 6 (2 times 3), 8 (2 times 4, etc.).

A discovery with implications

Is this discovery for our lives really so important? Yes, even if we here can not explain further. Planck's constant h is indeed a fixed, immutable constant of nature, a constant size. Wherever energy is released, it exists in nature, in the smallest atom of earthly substance, as well as on the sun. Without this constant electron could not move around a nucleus around, because they thereby release energy, it was not for the many different colored fabrics in our world, the sun could emit no light and no heat, there would be no nuclear power, ...

By Planck's constant could understand many things in nature in earnest. Therefore, Planck received 1918 Nobel Prize for his discovery.

But for our everyday lives Planck's discovery was of great benefit. Without them there would be today, for example, no computers, no lasers, no solar power.

By Planck's discovery of the idea was taken from the structure of our world, the more solid foundation. If nature makes leaps, seems much less fixed in nature, as was previously intended. Therefore, looking at Max Planck, despising the authority of any foreign, his discovery was skeptical at first.

Can it be coincidence that the orders of human life (eg marriage, family, country) since their stability have lost? Always scientific discoveries have influenced the overall thinking of the people. There are certainly connections that we do not understand. Since 1933, Planck was suffering severely under the dictatorship of the Nazis. His own son was killed because he opposed Hitler. Planck also lost his first wife and several of his children by death. The end of the 2nd World War I brought the critically ill 87-year-old learned a lot of misery

Planck, however, had a deep belief in a benevolent destiny, or a benevolent God. In his grief, he said: "God's ways are not our ways. But that trust in him to help us through the difficult trials through. "

1947 Planck died in Göttingen. Some academic institutions now bear his name and many German 2-DM coins bear his image.

Friedrich von Schiller, a great German poet

Around 1800, Germany was divided into many individual states. These have also been ruled by Napoleon. And yet, Germany has never produced such great men in literature, philosophy and art than in those decades. Among these great personalities are also the poets Goethe and Schiller.

Friedrich von Schiller was born in 1759 in the town of Marbach am Neckar, near Stuttgart. His father was a simple officer in the service of the Duke of Wuerttemberg. Schiller was deeply attached to his mother. She was a quiet, devout woman. Therefore, he wanted to become a priest as a child.

In Search of Freedom

Even with 13 years Schiller had to leave his parents' house. On the orders of the Duke of Wurttemberg, he had to go from now on, a military academy near Stuttgart, then a school for future soldiers. Here he remained eight years. He felt at this school like a prison. Because the students had little freedom there, they were forced to obey.

From this time, Schiller's love comes to freedom. He secretly wrote in these years his first play "The Robbers". In this drama, he calls for a fight against all tyrants and dictators. Those were some of the German princes, but there were also good among them. Napoleon was later a particular dictator.

After completing school, Schiller was a simple military doctor, because he had learned at school some medicine. This job gave him but no joy.

Not by much

Anonymous Schiller then made behave in Mannheim his play "The Robbers". The drama was a huge success. Then the Duke of Wurttemberg forbade Schiller to write plays about. But Schiller would just write plays, he was a true poet. He also wanted to be forced by the Duke does not amount to anything.

Therefore, Schiller fled 1782 from Wuerttemberg state to another German. This was dangerous for him and a big gamble. For now, he deserves nothing more. He was a poet still unknown. What should he live now?

Schiller walked out during the years 1782 to 1789 by Germany and forth. He suffered much hardship Sometimes a poem has been reprinted from him. ) Also have arisen in recent years play "Kabale (= intrigue and love," was performed. In it Schiller describes how to love a young nobleman and a simple peasant girl and get married because of their different stations can not. Both perish eventually.

But through all that Schiller did not get much money. He also was frequently ill. But again and again joy and admirers took him into her home and helped him out for a time of need

A new life

Schiller, Goethe and the Brothers and Sisters of Humboldt

1789 Schiller received by the help of Goethe a job as a professor of history at Jena in Saxony. Now he had a secure income. Therefore, he could now marry his fiancee Charlotte Lengefeld. Jena was also close to Weimar. There, in his residence of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Goethe and many other poets, artists and scholars had gathered.

In subsequent years, Schiller wrote no drama and only a few poems. He occupied himself with history and now a lot of philosophical questions, especially with the philosophy of Kant. By Kant, he learned that the man is a moral, ethical beings. He has the task to combat its poor, low impulses in himself and an ever more perfect, better human being.

A great friendship

1794, Schiller Goethe becoming better acquainted. Both men were very different. Goethe had never suffered material needs, while Schiller had to undergo much hardship with money worries and illness. When Goethe wrote or scientific work, he must be able to see and feel everything. Schiller, however, dealt better with theoretical concepts such as Beauty or love of humanity. Therefore, Schiller's language is not as natural as that of Goethe, but often somewhat artificial and pathetic. Nevertheless, it can inspire our imagination and his language. But despite these differences arose between the two poets ever closer friendship and great respect.

1799 Schiller moved to Weimar. He bought a house there for himself and his family. The friendship between Goethe and him were both inspired to write poetry again. Even before that Schiller had the spectacle of "Don Carlos" written ". Now the drama Wallenstein arisen, "" The Maid of Orleans "and" Mary Stuart ". In this drama Schiller tells how the Queen Mary by her opponent, Queen Elizabeth, is unjustly sentenced to death. But she affirmed her death, by accepting him as a punishment for a previous debt in their lives. So they inwardly win over Elizabeth, although it is externally based.

Scene from William Tell

In the poem "The Bell" Schiller describes the path of man from his birth until his death. His last completed drama "William Tell". In it he describes the struggle of the Swiss under their leader Tell.

Like no other poet Schiller has struggled to become an ever more perfect human being and relieve others through his plays and writings. He hunted for the ideal, the highest and greatest. Therefore, it is also called an idealist.

Early death

Schiller was a brave man, a courageous fighter and a hard worker. He demanded much of himself. Therefore, he was often ill. He has since passed away 1805 with 46 years in Weimar. He would have been able to create some great work. With it, Germany lost its greatest poet after Goethe.

Schiller speaks often of God. He says for example live in his poem "Ode to Joy": "Brothers, above the starry canopy must be a good father" (set to music by Beethoven in his 9th Symphony). But God was for Schiller just a mere thought. Talking to God in prayer, listen to God's voice to seek help from God - could not Schiller. Everything he did, he wanted to do on their own, without God.

While we humans can achieve on its own lot. But if we look at the world with its multiple emergency today, we realize how powerless man is basically. Schiller could not go on fighting his fight for good when he had to die in the middle of his life. There was all joy for him to end.

But if we can get us through Jesus to God, we are cared for by God and loved forever. Then we also can not take the life of death. Then we know that we are not men, but God is even a world without suffering, without creating tears or death.

Werner von Siemens: A Great Inventor

Everything has been invented first discovered in Europe, designed, built and manufactured, can be seen in the Deutsches Museum in Munich and experience. The name and the plan for the permanent exhibition, which shows not only the history of technology, but also their date, 1877, a man was already prepared, who was one of the great inventors of our time: Werner von Siemens. He not only created the term "electrical engineering", he also determined decisively what is meant by the word soon. The original of his dynamo, which he designed in 1866 and composed, you can see the immense importance of the museum not. With the help of wire coils and soft iron, it was here, Siemens managed to convert character - for example, manpower or water - into electricity and vice versa put electricity into work. He was the founder of modern power engineering.

Part time inventor

Werner was born in 1816 in the city of Hanover as the fourth oldest of fourteen children. After attending a grammar school in Lübeck, he wanted to be an engineer. Because his parents could not afford an education, Werner applied for admission into the army as an officer cadet. After a good passing an exam, he was a soldier. How happy was he when he began a three-year training in the artillery and engineering school was ordered to Berlin! Any available time is used, the young soldier to deal outside of the service with physics, chemistry and technology. After the expiry of three years he received his first home leave. But then he saw his father and mother for the last time, they soon died. Werner had promised to care for younger siblings. To supply the siblings, he was the inventor as a sideline. In a very practical things, he directed his thoughts, because it had plenty of money to be procured. Sun created a stone press, a steam engine controller and a new printing process. When he invented a method for electroplating gold and silver plating, she sold his brother William to England.

New opportunities in Berlin

Then, while William went to England for ever, he succeeded Werner Siemens, out of Magdeburg, and finally come to Berlin. There were already several machine shops, Borsig locomotive at the head of the construction by August. Its engines had been found in comparative rides even better than the English. Also, there was a technical school, a polytechnic and a club Physical Society, and the great naturalist Alexander von Humboldt gave his famous lectures. The whole town was interested in science and technology.

Siemens took advantage of every opportunity for continuing education. As he himself held in the Physical Society a lecture on electric telegraph, was the University of mechanics Halske attention to him. He was an artist in his field, and so impressed by the work designed by Werner Siemens pointer telegraph, that he decided, with the talented lieutenant. This now developed all the parts that are necessary for a viable communications technology: flash fuse, porcelain insulators and with gutta-percha, a rubber-like sap, seamless, insulated underground pipes. On 1/10/1847 was then the "Telegraphenbau-Anstalt von Siemens and Halske founded, while Siemens was still an officer in the main job.

The first telegraph line in Europe

Soon came the first orders for the company: She put the telegraph line Berlin - Frankfurt. As here, the National Assembly elected the King of Prussia to the German hereditary emperor, who was known in the same hour in Berlin. The people were amazed, and Werner Siemens was the hero of the day with this first telegraph line in Europe. It was raining now contracts, first in Germany, then in Russia. There, the younger brother Carl was gone. Werner Siemens could now take leave after 15 years of military service and devoted himself entirely to the orders and always new improvements and inventions. They were, as well as solid and enduring work of his workshop, a more persuasive advertisement than words. Siemens also did not intend to be good, but constant products earn his money, but its best efforts to promote the development of his electrical engineering further. He viewed his task for the benefit of all. In the First World Industrial Exhibition in London in 1851 he received for his telegraph, in addition to proven Alfred Krupp and a few other medals, the highest price. This gave his company a great swing. From the workshop, and he moved to Halske in a factory.

Adventurous tasks

Over the next two years, the brothers Carl and Werner Siemens built telegraph lines from St. Petersburg via Moscow and Kiev to Odessa and from St. Petersburg to Warsaw and Silesia, to Finland and Kronstadt. This cable had to be put through the Baltic Sea. Together with Wilhelm and Carl as Siemens Brothers mastered the tireless inventor later, the giant London-Calcutta in India. For these Indo-European line of nearly 11 000 km length, he developed new, improved writing telegraph. Across continents and oceans, mountains and steppes to work before the builders were transported the iron poles. Even the ocean was not an insurmountable obstacle. From Ireland to New York a transatlantic cable was laid. In addition, Siemens had built its own cable ship, the "Faraday". By Störversuche hostile companies and the fact that the cable is pulled out at sea and disappeared in 5 000 m depth, the expedition was an exciting adventure. Five less stressful followed: The name Siemens has been well known.

Great Inventions

For the steel-making, the brothers invented the Siemens-Martin process. Intended for the mining industry has been constructed an electric railway and shown at the Berlin Industrial Exhibition. Frohlich 10 000 visitors undertook a journey with them. Also developed by him alternators were soon big business. With its bright light bulbs conquered the cities and were soon used in mining. In Berlin, there were soon electric street lighting and tramways. Since 1877, in Berlin set up the first set, produced by Siemens - and at first dismissed as a technical gimmick. But Siemens had already foreseen as the telegraph, the enormous need for information of the time.

Thinking of others

In 1885 the company employed 1 100 workers in Berlin. Soon a whole district of the name "Siemens City contributed. Therefore, he also held his helpers, factory workers of the opposite obligation. He created, much earlier than the state, for illness, accidents and old age a pension fund, because "I would burn the money earned, such as red-hot iron in his hand, if I were not loyal assistant to the expected contributions," said Werner Siemens said.

At the World Exhibition in electrical engineering in 1881 in Paris, the House of Siemens was awarded an honorary diploma. Werner Siemens was awarded numerous honors. He received an honorary doctorate degree and was appointed as a member of the Academy of Sciences. In 1888 he received the title of nobility. Since then, his name was Werner von Siemens. He died on 6 December 1892 in Berlin.

Johannes Kepler, the founder of modern astronomy

Every day we see how the sun rising in the east and sets in the west. The sun is shining, therefore, revolve around the earth. It was believed in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543) was discovered that the earth revolves around the sun.

The earth is not the center

That was a bold assertion. For then the earth is indeed no longer in the center around which everything revolves. One might think: The earth is then just a random star without any special meaning. Everything on Earth is ultimately meaningless. Even in God's existence then it must be doubted is no security, no firm orders and bounds, the universe would be infinite.

Contrast, Johannes Kepler has shown that even if the earth is not the center of the world, yet there is everywhere in the universe order, and harmony. And from this we can learn that everything in life has of us as human beings in the universe makes sense. God created the world and means well by us humans.

Kepler was born 1571st He was an astronomer and soon became a famous scholar. He wrote numerous books on the movements of celestial bodies and the creation of the universe, on optics and geometry. He wrote the first science fiction novel.

The wonder of God's creation

Kepler could not be a professor in his home in Tübingen, Württemberg, he led a restless, wandering life in Habsburg Austria. He worked from 1594 in Graz, later in Prague at the court of Emperor Rudolf II, then in Linz, and finally in Silesia. As a Protestant, he was expelled from the Catholic Church several times, and sometimes had his salary by his employers for lack of funds not be disbursed. Before his death he was still feeling the horrors of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) before he died in 1630.

Kepler was very inquisitive and constantly researching. He was a talented, tenacious thinker. He was modest and honest, but critical, witty and ironic.

Kepler's greatest achievement is the discovery of the three "Kepler's laws." In it he describes the motion of the planets around the sun. The first law states: All the planets move in an egg-shaped elliptical (not circular, as we previously thought) around the Sun, stands in the sun at one focus. The second law is: The more the planets are further away from the sun, the slower they run.

Thus, Kepler has shown that even in space law and order prevail. Galileo has established the physics of the experiment. Kepler has extended the physics in space.

Kepler realized how e.g. a clock in the little ones a manufacturer must have (for nothing emerge on its own), so too must the great "movement" of the universe have a creator: God is omnipotent and omniscient.

Kepler asked God for the success of his work. He was amazed at God's creation and prayed: "Thank you, God, my Creator, because you have given me pleasure in the, what you've done. I have made the glory of thy works known to man to capture as much of its infinite richness, my little mind could. "

Heinrich von Kleist - a misunderstood genius

Not infrequently, great artists and scientists in their time are not detected. They often suffer misery and some die young. Including Heinrich von Kleist, one of the greatest German poet.

Kleist was born in 1777 in Frankfurt / Oder in the Prussian military family. After several years as a soldier, he began a restless, wandering life to Switzerland and Paris. His engagement, he broke up again. He wanted to be a poet like his contemporaries Goethe and Schiller. Later Kleist lived in Dresden and finally in Berlin.

An ambitious and restless man

Kleist was friendly and cordial, but also be aggressive. He was a poet very ambitious. Kleist always seemed to suffer an inner sadness. He was a restless, discontented man. Kleist, who had known God as a child, no longer believed in him. But God would help him, comfort him, and can give him inner peace.

The higher peace

If the thunder of the war wagon,
Human arm, on the discord reputation
People who carry in their hearts [10] heart,
People who created the God of love:
I think so, but you can rob me of anything,
Not the peace, the self-proven,
Not the innocence, not faith in God,
The hatred, how to stand the shock.
Not the maple dark shadow resist,
That he left me in the wheat field, refreshed,
And do not disturb the song of the nightingale,
The quiet bosom delighted me.
Heinrich von Kleist (1792/93)

Kleist said: We can not recognize the ultimate truth. The world is incomprehensible to us. We do not act based on clear evidence, clear ethical and moral principles, but we act on the basis of powerful emotions that rule us.

These feelings are often negative, for example Hatred and destructiveness. Kleist's characters make their own decisions about their innermost feelings, without regard to the society: How the Amazon Queen Penthesilea mangled in the tragedy of her lover Achilles result of an error and then kills himself. In the story "Michael Kohlhaas" this fanatical fighting for his rights and is thereby itself a robber and murderer.

A brilliant playwright

Kleist also knows positive and serene feeling. For example, fidelity in marriage or love, as in the still played "great historical drama Knight" "The Kathy of Heilbronn. His humorous comedy "The Broken Jug" is still often performed today, just as his latest drama "The Prince of Homburg. The Prince is victorious over his feeling that wants to destroy him. He recognizes that there are ethical and moral principles, and he obeys them. This is a new life given to him.

Kleist was a brilliant playwright. But his stories are masterpieces. Your language is concentrated and dramatic, forward urgently. Kleist's poetry is attributed to any literary school, it foreshadows the modern world and takes advance mainly by the tension-filled language, many expressionism.

Yet Kleist was no recognition in his time. He was poor, his family disowned him, Napoleon's reign over Germany made him bitter. God, he did not know. Thus he saw no way out. Together with the seriously ill bird Henrietta (* 1773), whose acquaintance he had made only on the same day, he took on 21.11.1811 at Wannsee, near Berlin's life. He was a man of us does, however flawed, sorry.

The "White Rose" - students against Hitler

Hans Scholl (1918-1943)

"Is not it a fact that today every honest German is ashamed of his government?" So said a leaflet was distributed in February 1943 at the University of Munich. Behind them were young students who are no longer the crimes of the Nazi government to stand by Watch wanted. They were even prepared to fight a criminal to sacrifice their lives.

The group called itself the "White Rose". It included the siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, Christoph Probst and Professor Kurt Huber. The group had around her numerous friends.

They all opposed the Nazis from the State because he took the man to freedom. Everyone in Germany was so think and act like the Nazis. Those who did not obey, finally came to a concentration camp. There, people were tortured and often killed.

Sophie Scholl (1921-1943)

But most Germans knew nothing about it. They cheered Hitler, as initially, the Scholls. Hitler had given the millions of unemployed in Germany to work and prosperity, and he had again made Germany strong and powerful.

Soon, however, Hitler began to persecute the Jews and kill them. And in 1939 he invaded one country after another. Million people died from this dictator.

Leaflets against Hitler

The young medical students rebelled against it. But what should they do? They could not eliminate Hitler. So they began to distribute leaflets against him. In mid-1942 and early 1943, they printed some leaflets in a run of several thousand copies each. These six different leaflets sent them by post to students, and strangers from the phone book. In it they called for the sabotage, and to overthrow Hitler. They demanded freedom of speech and thought, democracy, and more wage earners for the worse.

Most members of the "White Rose" were initially idealists. But they searched passionately for God. "Sophie Scholl wrote in 1942:" I am God, yet so far away that I did not even feel in prayer. But I want to cling to the rope to me God in Jesus Christ has thrown. And her brother said in the same year: "What I have found strength in prayer! At last I know, at what ever flowing spring I remove my terrible thirst.

Sentenced to death

Early in 1943, had the students in Munich at night several times painted on walls of many houses phrases such as "Down with Hitler" and "Long live freedom." Many reading these words, the people became restless. Shortly before the German army at Stalingrad had been defeated by the Russians.

On 18 Distributed in February 1943, the two Scholls morning in the stairwell of the University of Munich, hundreds of copies of the sixth leaflet. They were observed and arrested. Four days later, they were already condemned to death, and on the same day they died by the guillotine. The other four members of the "White Rose" were also executed in the coming months.

The young people all went quiet and faithful to their deaths. They knew they were so young, what they died and believed that they would see themselves in God's presence again. The two Scholl took the sacrament before their execution. As Sophie said goodbye to her mother said this to her: "Not true, Sophie believe in Jesus, now he takes to himself." "But you also have confidence in him," replied Sophie.

Eduard Mörike - a lyric poet

He is perhaps the most important lyric poet of Germany. His love and nature poems are among the finest in German literature. This year we are celebrating his 200th Birthday: Eduard Mörike

Eduard Mörike
Eduard Mörike was born on 8.9.1804 in Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart in Wurttemberg. He did not possess much physical strength. He always led a quiet, somewhat secluded life. This shows for example his poem "Prayer". Nevertheless, he had many friends and acquaintances. Thus, the poet Storm, Keller and Turgenev.
Lord, send what you want,
a love or sorrow,
I am pleased that both
flows from your hands.
Wilt with pleasure
and wilt with disease
I do not overwhelm.
But in the middle
modesty is lovely.

Moerike was a Protestant minister. But he preferred poetry. He, too, was often sickly. He was for years only a curate in various villages in Württemberg. Once he fell unhappy. The engagement with another woman, he dissolved after four years. But for the two compounds, he wrote beautiful love poems.

In the poem "At midnight" Moerike describes the feeling of calmness and depth of the night, linger in the still in a dream the events of the day:

Calmly the night climbed ashore,
leans dreamily at the mountain wall.
Your eye sees the golden scales now
the same time in quiet repose shells.
And bold indicate the sources of noise,
they sing of the mother, the night's ear
of days
been during the day by day.

Moerike used beautiful images in his poems. Many poems express a sense: for example, about the joy of spring, homesickness, the awakening in the morning, trust in God, love, joy and pain, premonitions of death. Moerike Poetry makes the reference to antiquity, recognized the folk song, to Goethe and the Romantics. The classical-romantic ballad tradition continues, he led.

1834 Moerike finally gained a permanent parish in the village Cleversulzbach. An unmarried sister took care of it. But after nine years he was retiring from teaching, with a modest pension of 280 guilders a year. Through literature teaching at a girls' school in Stuttgart, he earned something about it. The age of 47 he married. Two daughters were born to him.

Moerike also wrote a novel and several short stories and fairy tales. But until today the best known are his lyrical poems. In his time he was recognized but only slightly.

Moerike could easily write. His poems are full of real life. They are almost always affectionately - cheerful, often permeated with a little humor. In later years he has produced more "realistic" poems. E.g. the poem "September Morning":

The mist still reposes the world,
still dream of forest and meadows.
Soon, you see, when the veil falls
the blue sky, undisguisedly
herbstkräftig the subdued world
flow in warm gold.

Politics did not interest Morike. Revolution, he refused. He once said he had "a revulsion against Heine's political twaddle.

At the age Moerike separated from his wife. So he was unprovided for in his last years lonely and sickly. In 1874, he died in Stuttgart. On his deathbed he has reconciled with his wife.

Wilhelm Busch

Oh, what one often by evil
Children hear or read!
As here, for example, of these,
What are called Max and Moritz;

With these words begins the well-known and popular story of Max and Moritz rascals. It was written by the painter and poet Wilhelm Busch, who became famous for this. But who was this William Bush anyway?

Wilhelm Busch was born on 15 April 1832 in the Lower Town Wiedensahl. In his 9th Year he had to leave his parents' house because there is no more room in the house. He went to his uncle, from whom he was informed.

His father wanted him to study engineering, although his talent was more in drawing and painting. With 19 years of the son sit by himself and began to study art in Dusseldorf. Soon after, he went to Antwerp, and finally to the art academy in Munich. Artistically, he was influenced mainly by the Dutch painter Peter Paul Rubens, whom he admired for "his divine ease of presentation" very much.

Doubt, friendships, and landmark decisions

In Munich, where he lived and studied in 1854, although he was not the first professional fulfillment, but friends and key signposts for his life. At first he doubted whether he "had ventured to right to earn his living by painting." From 1858 he worked for the "Flying Leaves" and "Munich broadsheet. The publisher of this satirical publications, Caspar Braun, his friend and supporter. A decade after the failed revolution of 1848, there was a huge demand for publications such as open criticism was very difficult. His publisher, socially recognized Busch's sharp observation and next to his drawing his poetic talent. Wilhelm Busch said after this that: "Nothing looks like it is. At least the man, this leather bag full of tricks and whistles. And even apart from the vagaries and masks of vanity. Whenever we want something, you have to rely on the dubious servants of the head and the heads and never really learns what happened. "

Picture stories with millions of copies

The crucial breakthrough as an artist came in 1865 with "Max and Moritz". His shrewd publishers realized the chances of success of this story in pictures immediately. He edited the picture success as an independent book in a short time, reaching a circulation in the millions. It was the first of a series of large picture stories in which the prevailing morality of his time was satirically rayed.

He also wrote 1872), among other things: "The pious Helena" ( "Fipps the Monkey" (1879), "Painter Klecksel" (1884). 1874 published a book of poems and two stories. The self-righteous people stopped in front of bush with ironic exaggeration of a mirror. The unmasking of the philistine and his threadbare morality itself compelled the respect and recognition from historians. The excellent characterization of his contemporaries also showed that Wilhelm Busch was not a superficial man and was behind the funny pictures stories still a good dose of sobering seriousness.

Withdrawal from society

After he had lived for many years worked in Munich and he turned the bustling metropolis of 1898 alone, the back and moved to Mechtshausen in the resin. Wilhelm Busch was more of a shy and thoughtful man, who did not like the hype around his person. His fame he described as "dizziness goods. On 9 January 1908 he died, cut off from the outside world in his house. To this day he is with his memorable picture stories for many generations, a notion.

Heinrich Mann, "German Europe"

Heinrich Mann in 1906 (Image: Federal Photo Archive, Potsdam Str.1, 56075 Koblenz)

Heinrich Mann (1871-1950), who committed socially satirist and chronicler of his time, stood for many years in the shadow of his brother-writers Thomas Mann and was only since the 70s of the 20th Century by the general reading public appreciated.

An unusual career

Heinrich Mann was born into a highly respected merchant family in Lübeck. His father, Senator John Thomas Mann, was the public welfare of the city much at heart, he actively supported poor, underdevelopment, misery citizens. As the oldest son, Heinrich Mann was destined to take over the old trading company. He received an excellent education at the school. However, he had it on hard work and attention is lacking, as his teacher repeatedly confirmed. To the great disappointment of the parents, he leaves early in high school and began teaching in 1889 as a bookseller in Dresden, however, he breaks off after a year. He then worked as a volunteer in the S. Fischer Verlag Berlin and denies his makeshift living in proportion to the wealth of interest, which he inherited after the death of his father. Here in Berlin, he produced his first literary efforts: short stories and theater reviews. Despite his fragile health H. Mann often changes in the years to his residence, lives in France and Italy. After the novel "The wonderful thing" appears in 1903 the three-part novel "The Goddess". While still in his early works aesthetically and emotional issues were the focus of engaging in these satirical works are increasingly time-critical features in the foreground, so in the novel "In the Land of Cockaigne" (1900), which is subtitled "A novel among his people." As is important for the "polite society they belong."

A brilliant satirist

As a brilliant satirist turns out to H. Mann in his novel "Blue Angel" (1905). In the figure of the schoolmaster Raat - all students just "garbage" referred to - with merciless clarity the writer criticizes the exaggerated Autoritätsdenken at the beginning of the 20th Century, although the school serves only as a model. The book will be filmed 1931, after a screenplay by Carl Zuckmayer under the title "The Blue Angel" with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings in the lead roles.

In the next novel, "The Subject" (1916) demon of militarism, the straight into the 1st World War I led, denounced. The novel paints a sarcastic portrait of the German philistine with no special talents, whose sole ambition unconditional closeness to the ruling power and to represent and the spirit of his subjects is through a great political risk.

In 1914, relations between Henry and his brother Thomas Mann broke down completely. This was caused by the affirmation of the war by Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, however, the author of several essays in which he strongly condemned the nationalist-chauvinist mood in Germany. He sits down consistently for the reconciliation between Germany and France on the basis of democratic structures, even in the years of the Weimar Republic.

In exile

As one of the first intellectuals will Heinrich Mann after Hitler seized power and still deprived emigrated to France in 1933. In French exile, he writes together with Andre Gide and Lion Feuchtwanger for anti-fascist magazine. Until 1940 he lived in Nice, where he completed his historical novel trilogy about Henry IV completed. In 1940, he fled from occupied France through Spain and Portugal to Los Angeles, USA. Like many intellectuals, Heinrich Mann suffers greatly from the loss of the mother tongue and their own culture.

In 1942 he completed his great work "An age is inspected. This work is more than an autobiography: H. Mann sees Europe since the Enlightenment, he writes about his love for France, his sympathy for the ideas of the French Revolution of 1789, about the background of the failure of the Weimar Republic in Germany and the decay of intellectual and political life after Hitler seized power. A publication of the late work in the United States but failed. The financial position of the writer remains very tense. He is dependent on financial assistance of his brother Thomas, with whom he has reconciled himself in exile. After the suicide of his wife H. Mann frequently suffers from depression. He died in 1950 in Santa Monica, California, shortly before his planned return to East Berlin, where he had the presidency of the German Academy of Arts of the GDR has been offered.

Heinrich Mann is now considered one of the most important representatives of socially committed literature in Germany during the Weimar Republic and as a classical author of modernity.

Alexander von Humboldt (1756-1859), the last universal scholar

"It's a bustle in me"

No other man has a world map marked with his name so lastingly, it was the Humboldt Current in South America, the mountain peak in Venezuela, Humboldt, Humboldt Peak in Colorado. Cities, mountains, rivers, and also many animal and plant names remind of the great naturalist. Even Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had praised Humboldt's versatility with the following words: "Wherever you look, he is at home everywhere and showered us with spiritual treasures. He is like a fountain with many tubes, where it flows against always refreshing, and inexhaustible."

Today, botanists estimate it as a pioneer of plant geography, a branch of science, which he founded. Humboldt was disinterested [2] Supporters of young scientists, cultural researchers, such as Manfred Osten, former Secretary General of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Humboldt celebrated as the "last universal scholar of history." In addition to the exploration of the individual object in different areas, it was always his goal, the internal coherence to ascertain the legality in the development of nature and relate to in "neighboring" research subjects. Thus, we can put it today - modern-regarded as one of the founders of the interdisciplinary research.

When Alexander von Humboldt died 150 years ago in Berlin, he was almost 90 years old. He had been suspended during the course of his life of danger after another: the effect of electric eels in South America, he had checked his own body. He had drunk the poison-vines "curare" to prove that it has lethal effects only through direct blood contact. With light leather shoes, he climbed to over 6000 meters high Chimborazo in Ecuador, which he regarded as the highest mountain in the world. About 600 meters before the summit, he had to turn back, however. As the first Humboldt has described the symptoms of altitude sickness.

A was born. V. Humboldt, 14 September 1769 in Berlin as the son of a wealthy aristocratic Prussian family. He was interested in, unlike his older brother William oriented philology, early natural history. At the Universities of Frankfurt / Oder and Göttingen he studied natural sciences, but then went at the urging of his widowed mother as a student of economics state to Hamburg, then to the Bergakademie Freiberg in Saxony, to prepare for the higher civil service. As a mining engineer, he demonstrated his social commitment: he founded at his own expense, a "school" for the free education of the miners, for which he developed respiratory and mining lamps.

1796 A. von Humboldt went to Paris where he met the physician and botanist Aime Bonpland. Together, they prepared their first expedition. This led, not 1799 as planned at the South Pole, but for Venezuela. There Humboldt learned about slavery in its worst form. Shaken by these impressions, he wrote forceful appeals for the "humanization of education, however, the effect of conditions in the land of nothing. "All men are equally determined to freedom," Humboldt wrote in his diary. Humboldt drove up in an Indian boat down the Orinoco and discovered an arm of water, linking the Orinoco river system with that of the Amazon. The source of the Orinoco, but remained unknown, but collected between "Indian tigers" and "more mosquitoes than air" Humboldt about 6000, including 3600 previously unknown species of plants. With his traveling companion Bonpland, he passed over to Cuba, traveled to Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, where he discovered the guano as fertilizer. He traveled through Mexico to the United States, where President Thomas Jefferson gave him an honorable reception. When the celebrated Parisian Humboldt, on his return in 1804 as a hero, Napoleon will be extremely jealous of the successful researchers. In subsequent years, Humboldt evaluated the scientific results of his expedition. There was an extensive work in 33 volumes. Apart from botany, zoology, meteorology are also in it for the time unique new insights into economic geography and ethnology borne together. Leading the way were his research in the field of meteorology: Humboldt investigated the composition of the atmosphere. He had recognized the legitimate decrease of temperature with increasing altitude and drew 1817, the first Isothermenkarte the earth. Since Humboldt's financial resources were exhausted by the extensive expeditions, he accepted the invitation of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. to Berlin to. He became royal chamberlain, and casually began an extensive lecturing at academic institutions.

In 1829 Humboldt again participate as a geologist on an expedition that took him to Siberia, where were examined in the order of Russian Tsar Nicholas I, the diamonds. Next he traveled to the Urals, the Altai Mountains and to the Caspian Sea. After his return to Berlin Humboldt worked until his death on his life's work, a "physical description of the world," which he published under the title "Kosmos". However, he was able to complete this work no more. Between 1845-1862 a total of five volumes were published. Only after his death, his literary and scientific interesting correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Varnhagen, and the scientists Bunsen and Gauss, as well as with his brother, the eminent philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt was published.

Mozart - a miracle of music

A prodigy

Many people know the "Kleine Nachtmusik" and perhaps also know that it is from Mozart. But we are also aware that this man was one of the greatest musical geniuses? He was only 35 years old and has created over 600 works - an incredible performance in such a short life. And his music from a beauty like that is none other composers. Many composers are admired - Mozart is loved worldwide.

Mozart's father Leopold, a renowned music teacher, was German and was born in Augsburg in southern Germany. In Salzburg in Austria was signed on 27 January 1756, his son, Wolfgang Amadeus was born.

The little Wolfgang was a musical prodigy. Loving and strict father gave him a good musical education. At age five, he composed the first little piano piece.

Traveling Europe

By Wolfgang's sixth year at his father took him and his sister constantly tour through half of Europe, as far away as Paris and London. Everywhere the young Mozart had an enthusiastic reception. The aristocratic society, marveled at the virtuoso piano playing and the kids loved it.

1764, Wolfgang composed the first violin sonata and his first symphony at age 12, the first opera. In Rome, the Pope, he wrote a neunstimmige Fair could not be printed down from memory after twice listening!

Dissatisfied in Salzburg

1772 Mozart found a job as concertmaster at the Salzburg court orchestra of the archbishop. It was here, among other things, many Masses for the service. But the archbishop treated him like a lackey.

Mozart was well aware of his above-average musical ability, so he suffered from poor treatment by the Archbishop. In 1781 he announced after a quarrel with him his position there and went to Vienna.

No appointment

In Vienna, Mozart was not the hoped for an honorable job, either at the court of Emperor Joseph II, or anywhere else. Although we recognized his ability, but he was in everything including his own musical path. Maybe his music was for some reason to "difficult".

Perhaps they distrusted him because of his liberal views. He criticized easily people and authorities, such as The Catholic Church, although he felt connected to Christianity in a certain way. He joined the Masonic order, having been recognized as equal here.

Triumphs in Vienna

Yet Mozart's first Viennese were years of good years. He married Constanze Weber, and was happy with her. His love speaks to her from the first of his four operas "The Abduction from the Seraglio". 1786 the opera "The Marriage of Figaro" followed. The elder Joseph Haydn was his friend and admired him. These years were the happiest in the life of Mozart. Even financially it came to him relatively well.

It goes downward

But then the visitors stayed away from his concerts. Although enthusiastic about the 1787 Prague again at his new opera "Don Giovanni". But Mozart and his wife were both generous in spending money. So he often had no money and had to write humiliating begging letters to his friends.

Even now created magnificent works. Thus, the powerful Jupiter Symphony, but it was hardly mentioned. In Mozart's music mingled now increasingly resigned, sad tones.

In 1791's last opera "The Magic Flute", a fairy-tale opera with Masonic idea was first performed. Mozart died a few weeks later. His Requiem was unfinished. In an unknown grave for poor people, he was buried - one of the greatest musical geniuses.

Life and suffering of Georg Trakl

The Austrian poet, was born on 3.2.1887 in Salzburg. His father was a distributor of hardware and a happy, jovial man. His mother was a neurotic disposition, and loved the art. Georg Trakl raised outwardly well protected as the fourth of six children. From 1897 to 1905 he attended the grammar state school. In school subjects Latin, Greek and mathematics, his achievements were limited. So he was not mixed twice during his school days. Then he decided to study in the capital Vienna from 1908 pharmacy. He wanted to become a pharmacist.

First published poems

Through contacts with the "Academic Association for Literature and Music" were his first works in the magazine "Der Brenner published. The publisher supported him and recognized the great literary talents of Georg Trakl. 1910, the year of his father's death, he concluded his studies with difficulty a Master of Pharmacy in 1912 and lived in the city of Innsbruck. After Trakl volunteered volunteered for one years in the military as a drug clerk. As a pharmacist, he worked alternately in Salzburg, Vienna and Innsbruck. But he never stopped for long. Georg Trakl was a melancholy and restless loner. Only his sister Margarethe (Grethe), he had a strong connection. He could not endure life very difficult, and plunged again into drugs and excessive alcohol consumption. Margaret did to him, they also shared his dependence on drugs. She studied music in Vienna and later in Berlin. George was very jealous, and tolerated it only works with inner torment, when his little sister was, together with other men.

An ultimate experience

In 1912, married "Grethe" a German bookseller in Berlin. George said this in a state of shock and unleashed his creative poetic life. His poetic work is marked by sadness, anxiety, depression and the search for the meaning of life. The pictorial language of his poetry was of great strength and darker colors. Today he is considered one of the most important exponents of Austrian Expressionism. Trakl was able to take its most profound painful feelings into words and give them a unique expression. He let himself in his subjects from the ancient myths of influence, such as in his poem "Orpheus". Even the imagery of Christianity had inspired him. When war broke out (1914) he advanced as drugs Advisor to Galicia (Ukraine) and is required after the bloody battle of Grodek / Rava-Ruska alone play for ninety seriously wounded in a barn care. Trakl suffered a nervous breakdown and was prevented by his comrades out to shoot himself.

An early end

Because he had received a severe mental shock, he was eventually transferred to the observation to Krakow. He died at the age of 27 years on a cocaine poisoning. There now seems unsure whether this was a suicide or an accident. Like his sister reacted to it is largely unknown. We only know that she has aborted a pregnancy and shot himself three years after the death of his brother himself. Their marriage was not happy. The profound poems of Georg Trakl in his own language is the mirror image of a decaying world, and apt expression of a seemingly unrelated images abundance. The depth of his work is today scarcely fathomable. The Bible says: "Nothing is so unfathomable as the human heart. It is full of mischief, who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9). "But God can!

The Brothers Grimm: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

On January 4, 1785, Jacob Grimm was born in Hanau, his brother William on Feb 24, 1786th As inseparable as their names are still living, the brothers throughout their lives. After the untimely death of the father she grew up in very modest circumstances.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (Image: Wikipadia Commons)
The financial support of an aunt gave them studied law in Marburg. Almost simultaneously, the brothers discovered their passion for ancient languages and literature, which it had devoted her life. Together they published a collection of German folk songs and in the years 1812-1814 which have become world famous "Children's and Household Tales" in 2 volumes, alongside 60 tales, all forms of folk poetry as is contained in legends, jokes and horror stories, and animal stories. After working in the Foreign Office in 1814 as a librarian Wilhelm Grimm went to Kassel, a little later followed him to Jacob. Even William's marriage in 1825 did not alter the fact that the life of the two brothers continued to run parallel. They attended both a chair at the University of Göttingen, where shared the apartment and worked door to door.
In 1840 the brothers of King Frederick William IV was appointed to the Academy in Berlin. In Berlin, the brothers shared her life's work began to establish a "German Dictionary", which should capture the vocabulary of the German language from 400 years ago, in alphabetical order to understand and explain to everyone.

The Brothers Grimm had the dictionary initially planned to 4-6 books and thought they could handle this work in four years. Its completion, however, lasted 100 years, because until 1961 there was a provisional conclusion. The planned 33 volumes have been volumes 4-6. It is still the most comprehensive and scientifically important dictionary of the German language.

Jacob Grimm's life was outwardly moving than his brother. He worked as a secretary in public duties, but gave him his official business sufficient time for scientific studies. So he casually worked intensively on his "German Grammar" with whom he founded the German philology.

Hans in Luck

Hans had served his master for seven years, he one day said to him: "Sir, my time is up, give me my wages, I would go home to my mother." The Lord replied, "You are loyal and hardworking worked. How was your work, it will be your reward. "And he gave Hans a big piece of gold.

Hans wrapped the piece of gold in a cloth and put it on his shoulder and was on his way home. Then he met a horseman. "Ah," said Hans quite loud, "what is riding so beautiful. As you sit high up, stumble over no stones, saves the shoes and come forward fast with no effort. "The rider reined in his horse and shouted:" Hey Jack, why are you going to walk and yet you have so hard to bear? " "I have to I suppose," answered Hans. "I carry home a lump of gold. Affects me on the shoulder. "" You know what, "said the rider," we will exchange. I give you my horse, and you give me your lump of gold. "" With all my heart, "said Hans. The rider took the gold, helped Hans on the horse, and he rode - hopp, hopp them -. But soon the horse was running so fast that Hans could no longer hold in the saddle and fell into a ditch.
Then a peasant came along, and driving a cow before him. The farmer helped Hans back on their feet, Hans thanked him and said: "The riding is not fun, because I find your cow better running so nice and slow. And from a cow you have you have daily milk, butter and cheese. "

"Well," said the farmer, "if you have such great pleasure in my cow, I will give it to you like for your horse." Hans said, so glad. If I have a piece of bread, so now I can always eat butter and cheese, I am thirsty, I milk my cow and drink the milk. Heart, what do you want more, "thought Hans, and pulled away with the cow. At noon, the sun was getting hotter, and Hans was very thirsty. So he tied his cow to a tree and tried to milk the cow. Since he had no pail he put under his leather cap. But however much he tried, it came not a drop of milk. And because he was so clumsy, gave him the cow with its hind such a blow on his head that he fell to the ground and was almost stunned with pain.

Fortunately, just passed by a butcher, who transported on a cart, a young pig. "Ah," said Hans, "who has such a pig, the` s going really well. If you kill it, you get a lot of good juicy roast and sausage. "" Agreed, "said the butcher. "For your sake I want to change my pig for your cow."

Hans went on quite happy because everything went according to his wishes. Soon he met a boy who wore a large, fine goose under his arm. Together they made halt, and Hans told how he had always made such good bargains. But the boy shook his head. "With your pig is probably something not quite right," he said in a stern voice.

"In the village the mayor a pig has been stolen from the stable. I'm afraid you've exchanged this pig. The villagers already looking for the thief, and it would be terrible for you if they caught you with the pig. "Given Hans very frightened. "Help me, get the pig and give me the goose," he begged. The boy agreed, and went away quickly. Hans was delighted and thought: is amazed at how my mother when she sees the beautiful goose!

When he got to the next village, there stood a scissors grinder with his barrow, the Hans asked: "Where did you buy that fine goose?" Hans replied: "I have not bought, but traded for a pig." "And the pig? "" That's what I get for a cow. "" And the cow? "" The I've got a horse. "" And the horse? "" That I have been a huge lump of gold. "" And the gold "" That was my reward for working seven years. "

"If you want to have your pockets always full of money, so you need to buy you a grindstone and a grinder. Since I have a whetstone for you who may be a little worn, but I also do not want more of this than your goose. "Hans thought: Have I always money in my pocket, I am the happiest man in the world. He gave the sander the goose and received the grindstone.

Because Hans had since early morning on his feet and had great distance behind him, he grew tired. He sat at the edge of a fountain, to rest and drink. The grindstone, he put his side on the edge of the fountain. He leaned a bit to drink. Since the sharpening stone suddenly fell into the well. Hans jumped for joy. He was so happy that he had to haul the heavy stone anymore. "Now I'm the happiest man in the world, free from every burden," he said relieved. With a joyful heart, he ran on very fast, soon reached his native village and fell into the arms of his mother.

Lessing - fighter for freedom and humanity

Today we enjoy many freedoms. The main ones are summarized in the "human rights". This was not always so. With the Enlightenment in the 18th Century began, the fight for personal freedom and human rights. The most important pioneers in Germany was to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729 to 1781).

Lessing was a writer, a distinguished essayist and playwright. He fought for tolerance and for a noble sentiment among the people. So he helped prepare the humanism of German classicism.

"Self-willed and bold", a "fiery temperament" - it was judged in its school-certificates. His classmates called him "Admirabilis", the "admirable," because he dared to contradict also the director.

Lessing was born in a parsonage in Kamenz (Saxony). As a child he attended no public school, but got private lessons. After graduating from the elite school of St. Afra in Meissen (Saxony) in Leipzig, he began to study theology. During this time there developed an interest in literature and poetry. Since he took over the debt guarantee for an actor, he had to leave Leipzig, and he continued his studies in Berlin. He became a freelance writer.

In Berlin, he found interesting conversation partners such as Voltaire and the wise Jewish moral philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. In the Seven Years War, employed as a secretary in the Prussian army, he enjoyed the free life of a soldier. During this time he wrote the comedy "Minna von Barnhelm, as well as numerous fables in verse. Always on the lookout for progressive-minded people, Lessing went to Hamburg 1767 by the German National Theater was founded there. Here he wrote the "Hamburg Dramaturgy".

Lessing hoped for Germany a new flowering of German literature as soon afterwards with Goethe, Schiller and others indeed arrived. As examples of this pattern, he wrote several plays. In still plays comedy, "Minna von Barnhelm he designed real people of his time in flesh and blood, then something new. In Emilia Galotti, the first German bourgeois tragedy, he criticized the tyranny of the then rulers.

In Hamburg, Lessing published the anonymous "fragments of an unknown writer." The clear anti-Christian tendencies in this work were a Lessing sharp criticism from the church. He fought, among others, the drama "Nathan the Wise". It says Lessing by the wise person of the Jew Nathan: I want people to accept themselves in their diversity. The value of religion consists in their quest for truth, for active philanthropy. All religions have the same kernel of truth: namely, the requirement to do good, but very pale, and the belief in a creator. On everything else, so in Christianity, for example, the redemption through Christ, can and should be dispensed with.

His last years from 1770 until his death in 1781, Lessing spent a very lonely and nearly blind in the small Wolfenbüttel. There he was a librarian at the Duke of Brunswick, and managed the world-famous library. In his last book "The Education of Mankind", he sees humanity on the path to ever greater perfection. Decisive is, according to Lessing's own moral conduct of the individual.

We are grateful for our freedom today, which Lessing, among others, has fought for us. However, we see today are the dangers of too much freedom: increase in drug abuse and crime, greed in the economy, divorce, terrorism. Therefore, it is the question of whether mankind today is truly on the road for the better.

Many Christians profess: Only through Jesus, through his redemption on the cross, I have become ever more freely and would be free from my mistakes. We humans need God, if we should really be helped.

Freud - discoverer of the sick soul

The unconscious

We may be physically healthy and not sick. For example, stomach pain or heart problems, have or are suffering from depression, with anxiety, addictions, compulsive behaviors. Then our soul is sick. Have discovered the soul as a cause of disease is the merit of Sigmund Freud.

Freud was born in 1856, 150 years ago, in Freiberg, in today's Slovakia. The land then belonged to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. His parents were Jews. Freud felt mentally more than a German, and anti-Semitism in Germany was strong.

He married a German Jew, with whom he had six children. The marriage was good. Despite his revolutionary discoveries Freud was conservative in his lifestyle.

Freud was a doctor in Vienna. By treating mentally ill, he found out: If these patients could spontaneously say everything they could think about important things, such as their parents or an important event, then have them recognized by mental disorders. This could then be treated and removed where possible. Even in dreams and failures come from the unconscious thoughts, desires, conflicts to light.

Freud used for his famous patient, the couch, so they relaxed and were able to speak openly.

The Oedipus Complex

Furthermore, Freud discovered: Every boy has his mother as an infant in love, fallen unconscious and sexually jealous and his father, every girl in her father. The boy finally succeed in identifying with his father, he is an emotionally healthy man, he must repress his sexuality, but because of social norms or because the father rejecting him, may affect his mental disorders. He can not fully develop as a man with the devotion to the female sex, and can for example be a homosexual. Among girls, the reverse is true.

Freud called this behavior the "Oedipus complex". Oedipus in Greek mythology who killed his father and married his mother.

Freud saw the sex drive as the Zentraltrieb in man. From the displacement or the mismanagement of sexuality in childhood, in his opinion caused by the most neuroses, emotional disturbances. For the time this statement was a scandal.

Later, Freud stood next to the sex drive as opposed to the destruction or death instinct.

Freud is famous

Freud's psychoanalysis ( "psychic research") has been vigorously opposed, but gained more and more supporters. Since 1909, Freud taught at the University of Vienna. He eventually became world famous. His original followers Adler and Jung parted from him later.

Freud was an atheist. He held the religion of a collective neurosis, a false-demand presentation. It would eventually be overcome by science. The future of humanity, he looked rather pessimistic.

In 1923 he received the palate cancer. Many operations followed. In 1938 Austria joined the Nazis to Germany, he emigrated to London, accompanied by his favorite daughter and colleague Anna. He died in 1939 at his own request by a dose of morphine.

Many of Freud's assertions prove to be exaggerated today. Thus, for example, religion makes people sick, not neurotic. On the contrary, religious people are on average healthier, happier and longer life than non-religious, as shown by multiple studies. Ultimately, the human emotional healing, inner peace found only in the sense of security in God.

But many people in the world today, developed by Freud soul searching helps to be internally stable, and with life.

Strength of faith in dark times

The 100th Birthday of Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (1907-1945)

Christianity hostile ideologies such as Nazism and communism in the 20th Century in Europe is trying with all his might to put their menschenverachtendeWeltanschauung take the place of Christian values. Courageous people have protested. Even death could not destroy their certainty that God keeps his people even in the darkest night, the loyalty.

One of those men who saw in Christianity, the decisive force in the overthrow of the national-socialist rule in Germany, was Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was born on 11 March 1907 at Castle Kreisau in Lower Silesia. The open, liberal thinking of the parents influenced the younger Moltke. He studied law and political science in Breslau, Berlin and Vienna. Besides his studies, he devoted himself to his true passion, politics. He informed about the policies of the parties, observed critically their practice and developed more and more solidarity with the threatened Republic. He abhorred Nazism and all forms of anti-Semitism. 1929 Moltke, took off his exams and in the same year took over the administration of the estate in Kreisau. In 1931 he married Freya Deichmann, the daughter of a liberal Protestant bankers. His wife shared his decidedly anti-Nazi sentiments. What he meant his wife, what moral support they seemed to him that is evident in the unique Moltke's letters to her. They are both a moving document of a love that had to prove themselves under the conditions of a totalitarian regime and a conspiratorial resistance against the political rulers. Starting in 1934, Moltke was working as a lawyer in Berlin, while his wife lived with the children on Good Kreisau. Moltke dealt primarily with the advice and defense of Jewish citizens, and got more and more targeted to the Gestapo.

After the annexation of Austria and the Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938 Moltke took up contact with opponents of the Nazi regime, who were known to him from before.

In September 1939 he was conscripted into the Office of Foreign Intelligence, which was headed by Admiral Canaris. Through this activity Moltke was an insight into the plans of warfare the Army Command and learned of the crimes of the SS-Sonderkommando.
He led a dangerous political and conspiratorial double life. Together with Peter Yorck von Wartenberg, he set up his own resistance group. This happened regularly on Good Kreisau to develop plans for the new political order in Germany after the fall of Hitler. Included in this circle, which includes Protestant and Catholic theologians and representatives of social democracy, was next to intensively examine the role of churches in the coup. These questions of Christian faith were discussed. All members of the Kreisau combined experience and a common attitude: the horror of the Nazis, for they represented the reality of evil and suffering at the time. " Many of them, including Moltke, processed this experience through a deliberate turning to the Christian faith. Thus they discovered the unique truth of the Christian message for mankind and for himself personally from scratch. Always read Moltke in the Bible frequently and sought comfort in the Sunday church services.
The Gestapo finally discovered the leading role in Moltke's Kreisau Circle. On 19 January 1944 Moltke was arrested along with several others. Prior to his execution on 23 January 1945 in Berlin Plotzensee he writes letters to his wife, impressive evidence of resistance against the Nazi domination of Christian belief. In the face of likely death sentence for the policy Moltke plays hardly any role. During the trial is before the People's Court made clear that the confession of the accused Moltke and the Kreisau to Christianity as the ultimate crime against the Fuhrer and the German people will be counted. In one of his last letters Moltke wrote a few days before his execution: "It is clear that I was not convicted as an aristocrat, not a German, but as a Christian and as nothing else at all ... We have fulfilled a request. The Lord has led us to this point beautifully, he has shown us through many signs that he is with us. From this I conclude that, if I ever ask, will make us feel that he is with us. He can do just on the gallows in Plotzensee as good as in freedom in Kreisau. ... To me he will reply when I ask him: Let's meet you at my mercy. "

On 23 Moltke was executed in January 1945 along with four resistance fighters. The American diplomat George Kennan, the Moltke knew for many years, wrote in retrospect: the Moltke was a moral character so much and yet a man with such broad ideas as me in the 2nd War on both sides of the front is no other encounters. As a political resistance fighters, he was once a martyr of the Church of Jesus Christ. "

Paul Gerhardt - a master of the hymn

Paul Gerhardt (1607-76) was on 12 March preceding 400 years was born in the small town Gräfenhainichen in Saxony. His hometown is located near the city of Lutherstadt Wittenberg. His father was mayor and restaurateur, his maternal ancestors were priests. Paul Gerhardt is next to Martin Luther as one of the most important German composer of hymns. His songs are sung in the Catholic Church and in churches of other countries. From his verses serene confidence in God speaks, but they also tell a lot of fear and oppression during the terrible period of the Thirty Years War.

Paul Gerhardt has gone through much hardship. He had already lost both parents at age 14. And almost half of his life during the terrible Thirty Years' War raged in Germany (1618-48). Many towns and villages were destroyed, and Paul Gerhardt's hometown Gräfenhainichen. Under these painful impressions were created probably the following verses:

"Arise and steu` re the heartache on the earth,
bring back and renew the welfare of your stove.
Let blossom as before, the country devastated, so
the churches, so the fire laid waste by war and anger.
You are a spirit that teaches that one should rather pray;
Your prayer will ear unto thy singing well klinget,
it rises to the sky, it can not be off and pressing,
bring to the assistance that can help everybody. "

Poets of trust in God, trust

In spite of severe personal setbacks, the poet exclaims again and again to trust in God. His best known song is:

Commit thy way thou
and what hurts your heart
the allertreusten Care
of which directs the sky.
The clouds, air and wind
there are ways to run and train,
is to find ways to
because your foot can go.

Because Paul Gerhardt has been through much suffering himself, he may also offer other wonderful consolation.

"Everything passes away, but God seeth all ohn waver;
his thoughts, his word and will have eternal reason.
His salvation and grace that does not take damage,
heal the heart of the deadly pain,
now and for ever keep us healthy. "

His language is full of tenderness and warmth. In his modesty he has never released his songs himself.

Paul Gerhardt wanted to become a priest. According to the study of theology, however, he was devastated by the war in which Germany will not pastorate. 1643 he moved to Berlin. There he became acquainted with Johann Cruger, the leading church of the city, so to know Paul Gerhardt's verses. Cruger was thrilled by the intellectual depth and significance of the texts and published until 1661, almost 100 of Gerhardt's songs, which quickly became known beyond the borders of the city beyond. Together with his successor, Ebeling, he has set to music the more than 120 hymns of Paul Gerhardt issued with beautiful melodies and.

So for the church year, the songs: "How shall I receive thee (Jesus)") (Advent, "I stand) in your crib here" (Christmas, "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded" (passion), "Up, up my heart with joy "(Easter) and the song of petition to the Holy Spirit" Take you to your gates "(Pentecost).

Not until the age of 44 he was in the small town near Berlin Mittenwalde a job as a pastor. Now he saw the material basis for a marriage.

Joy and thanksgiving

Paul Gerhardt's house in Wittenberg (Image: Wikimedia Commons - Torsten Schleese)

A second theme in addition to the reliance on God is Paul Gerhardt's songs, the joy in God and thanking him for his many good gifts to us humans. The first stanza of his "Summer Song" is:

Go forth, my heart, and find joy
In this love summer time
to your God gifts;
look at the beautiful gardens, ornamental
and see how you and me
ausgeschmücket have.

1657 Paul Gerhardt was appointed as minister to Berlin, where, however, belonged to him a new emergency. There fought the confessions of the Lutheran and Reformed, although both were Protestant. Then in Brandenburg / Prussia, reigning Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm I, this dispute was opposed vigorously.

The Lutheran Paul Gerhardt was a peace-loving, friendly, sensitive man. But for the sake of his conscience, he said, in dealing with Protestants ought not to remain silent. Thus, the Great Elector had him deposed after 1668 as pastor.

After only 13 years of happy marriage of Paul Gerhardt's wife died at 45 years. This was for him a deep sorrow. Of his five children died, four very early, only one son survived.

Detained in God

At the end of his life, Paul Gerhardt was still seven years pastor in the town of Lubben. However, he has written in his last years, no more songs. In all of the many need of his life he clung to God, and God has never left him. But at the end of his life he had grown tired

Although I will now drive
my life through the world.
But I think not stay at
in a strange tent.
I walk my street,
the (home to the sky) leads
da me without all the measurements
My father is comforting.

On 27 Paul Gerhardt died in May 1676, almost seventy years old. In his songs, he lives on until today. Paul Gerhardt's songs have spread all over the world, they have been translated into many languages. Countless people have drawn from it strength, consolation and trust in God.

Richard Wagner and the Music Drama

We are certainly familiar with the music of Mozart and Beethoven, and they probably also liked to hear. But Richard Wagner is probably most known only in name.

This is because Wagner, a daring, idiosyncratic innovators was. Not everyone takes pleasure in his music. Nevertheless, he was a musical genius.

A freedom-loving hikers

Wagner was born in 1813 in Leipzig in Saxony. Even as a student, he was very interested in music, poetry and theater. He wished, as many German at that time, more freedom for the people, more democracy, as well as the political unification of Germany.

First of Wagner as a musician for three decades led a restless, wandering life (eg, Konigsberg, Riga, Paris, Dresden, Weimar, London, Moscow). His works have had to assert itself only slowly. An early marriage in an actress was unhappy and had no children.

Sometimes, Wagner had to flee from his creditors, because he was not able to pay its debts. He loved expensive furniture, exquisite fabrics and fine fragrances, by which he was inspired to work.

1849 in Dresden, Wagner had taken part in the uprising against the Saxon King. Only by chance, he escaped his arrest. He had to flee and then stay over 10 years abroad, before he was allowed to return to Germany.

Great music dramas

Gradually his great music dramas created "The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" and "Der Ring des Nibelungen" with the parts of "Das Rheingold, Die Walkure "Siegfried" and "Gotterdammerung." The fabrics he usually took to the world of legend.

Wagner wanted a change of society, eliminating all "reactionaries," human liberation from all bonds of the state, the Church of the money. He then sympathized with the workers fighting for their rights. His ideal was the "new, free man." Hence it is in all his music dramas in some way to "salvation of mankind" () by humans.

The opera, with its arias and their "beautiful" music of Wagner was superficial. More and more he has his work through-composed, therefore, "", which means he has to provide them instead of arias and recitatives with a single continuous "endless" melody. He declined to deliberately "beauty" and popularity of his works.

Even the text books for his own music Wagner wrote music and words are equal for him. Therefore, we call his works "music dramas".

Wagner was convinced that would be the artwork of the future union of music, poetry and image in a single plant. Such a "total art" then possessed in his opinion, moral depth.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria admired Wagner's music. In 1864 he saved him from a desperate shortage of money and became his friend. Since then, he supported financially generous Wagner. With his help, Wagner was able to build the Bayreuth Festspielhaus for performances of his works, and buy his house "Wahnfried".

Wagner had finally prevailed and came to rest. His music was admired by many, but also by not a few, Nietzsche, for example, sharply criticized.

Wagner has had several love relationships with women. After the death of his first wife he married the divorced by her husband, Cosima von Bulow, daughter of Franz Liszt. It was him an ideal addition. They had three children.

As Wagner's last work was still writing the "Parsifal". He died in 1883 in Venice.

Wagner was very temperamental. He loved crude jokes. He was enormously productive. In music, he would have no side. His faith was humanism.

In his writings he has said is true and false, also German-national and anti-Semitic. He was a friend of the prince and also a revolutionary.

Powerful effects of his music went out. To the Wagner Festival, held every summer in Bayreuth, thousands from around the world.

Theodor Mommsen - a great historian

Even historians do not always properly assess what happened. Therefore, even called the Greek historian Thucydides: Events will be told how they have happened, without any subjective influence. That a historian can still be a great scientist, shows the example of Theodor Mommsen. He was in the second half of the 19th Century, a well-known spokesman in the Bismarck Reich.

Mommsen was born in 1817 in Schleswig-Holstein, the son of a Protestant minister. Germany at that time consisted of numerous individual states (Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, etc.). They were each ruled by a prince and not by a parliament. Many asked why the German revolution of 1848 - but failed - the unification of the German states into one empire and the German government by the people in Parliament.

Mommsen, a historian and jurist, but also politicians. He, too, his life fighting for the unity of Germany and for a parliamentary democracy. He belonged to the then powerful liberal movement in the German bourgeoisie and was an opponent of the Conservatives and the nobility. As representatives of the people he sat in the Prussian parliament and later in the Reichstag. He demanded as much freedom for the individual. His thoughts are now present in Germany, especially from the FDP.

Mommsen's historical interest was in ancient Rome. First, he was a professor at Leipzig. He was deposed in 1851 because of his criticism of the government of Saxony. For two years he went abroad at the University of Zurich. In 1861 he became professor of Roman History in Berlin. He was also a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

His most important works are his "Roman History" (1854-85) and "Roman Constitutional Law" (1871-88) and "Roman Criminal Law" (1899). Also for the inscriptions - and numismatics as well as the legal history, he provided many new insights. He was a master at, present and criticize.

Mommsen was in his assessment of the present and the past, often one-sided and contradictory. He glorified the "liberal" Caesar and condemned his "conservative" opponents Cicero. Similarly, he actually hated the conservative Junker Bismarck as a representative of a "strong" state. He opposed the protectionist and social policy. He demanded more rights for the parliament, the Reichstag.

With his hatred of Bismarck misunderstood Mommsen, the great merit, which had this also, for example, for the national unification of Germany, which was also Mommsen's concerns. Nevertheless, Mommsen was a great historian. In 1902 it was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to him, "the greatest living master of the historical present performing arts, with special consideration of his monumental work 'Roman History'." He died in 1903.

A grandson and two great-grandchildren of the scholar, also Mommsen named, were also important historians in the 20th Century.

Kurt Wager
The long-standing folk dance "Pope" for the southern region.
Kurt Wager received on 28.3.1949 from the Ministry of Culture of Baden-Württemberg, the task of the Department of youth development and education advice in matters of traditional dance and support. Founder of the "folk counseling," former name "Folk Dance outpatient Kurt Wager" in Stuttgart. For 30 years he has provided districts with folk material in the form of music records, dance descriptions and sound recordings, with literature, which was constituted at that time little known and far more difficult than it is today (2004).
Born 1911, died 1979th
(Ref: "Dancing", Journal of Counseling folk Hartmut Wager, 4 / 1999, p.25,
and "Our mission," newsletter of the Association of Singing, dancing and playing parties in Baden-Wuerttemberg, November 2004, p. 6)
Folkdance Counseling
Advice on all aspects of folk dance in Stuttgart.
Founded in 1949 led by Kurt Wager and by him until 1979. Continued by his wife, Elli Wager until 1988, then adopted by his son, Hartmut Wager and 1994 moved to Heroldstatt.
1999 was connected to the "German folk archive material about 23,625 dances available, and the agency was represented on the Internet at www.tanz-vtb.de.
(Ref: dancing 4 / 1999, S.24ff, and folk dancing 4 / 1994,) p.94.
The folk dance agency and the archive was taken over on 1.1.2002 from the Swabian Cultural Albverein.
The Swabian Cultural Archives (the new name of the archive) and the folk counseling is available on the Internet at www.schwaben-kultur.de.
Www.tanz The Internet address-vtb.de no longer exists or has been taken over by someone else and has nothing to do with dancing.
Walter Kogler
Walter Kogler has after 2 World War ensured that the German folk dancers were treated with good music on vinyl records.
To this end he imported LP recordings from the U.S. (eg, by Michael Herman) and founded in 1955 as record-Verlag Walter Koegler in Stuttgart-Moehringen, in exactly the right tempo of dance music under the trademark "dancing" could say.
Born 29.10.1929 (Ref: "Walter Koegler is 70" in dancing 4 / 1999, p.28).
Received about the "Kurt-1989-Wager Medal for outstanding contributions to the folk dance"
What is special about the record, which has brought out Walter Koegler dancing in his publishing under the brand "is that most of the PRS are free, because Walter Kogler, is an enthusiastic folk dancer and wants to avoid the fact that his friends are charged fees for dances must.
An exception to this is the Krüzkönig, because the music by H. Dieckelmann still subject to copyright. At dances, therefore caution is advised.
In his CDs can be specified for each dance, whether the music of GEMA subject or not. Only the use of his music on radio and television W. Koegler want to be informed.
Walter Kogler is on 16 June 2007 at the age of 77 years died.
The publishing house will continue from 1.1.2008 by Reinhold Reinhold Publishing Frank as Frank (formerly Walter Koegler Publisher) Böblinger Street 457, 70569 Stuttgart. The web address remains www.tanz-koegler.com.
Franz Pulmer
The former folk dance "Pope" for northern Germany († 1971).
Dance researchers, bandoneon player, musician and dance director. Held inter alia Folk dance courses in the Youth Park Hamburg-Langenhorn with Arnold and Annelies Bökel Waszkewitz together, eg on 12.11.1961.
Arnold Bökel
Born in 1926 (Ref: Dance 1 / 1996 p. 9).
Ambassador of dance, especially the German folk dance, in many countries.
Learned, among other things with Anna Helms Blasche, son of Francis Pulmer. Held many dance-off courses since 1964 for many years chairman of the Denver International Folk Dance in Hamburg, engaged and active in the working group for dance in Germany.
Today (2004) Honorary Member of the Executive Board of the German Federal Association of Dancers
Paul and Gretel Dunsing
Well-known dance leaders from the U.S., who have taught many community dances and Squares
Michael Herman
Publishers of excellent folk music in New York (USA).
He brought folk dance records under the label "Folk Dancer out", which after the 2nd World War by Walter Koegler also came to Germany. They were performed by Michael Herman's Folk Orchestra.
Gotz Zinser
Head of various folk dance groups.
Subject Librarian for folk dancing in the Association of Singing, dancing and playing parties in Baden-Württemberg, director of courses for folk dance and flag waving, several years 2 Chairman of the "male".
Interview with Götz Zinser, probably from the year 2000
Deckenpfronn folk dance group, Dance director Gotz Zinser.
Costume Wurmlingen / Rottenburg eV, dance director Gotz Zinser.
Hedo Holland
Editor of "FOLKbrief" since 1990 or earlier, with information from the folk scene, and references to publications, records and CDs in this area, including "real" folk dance. Organizer of various folk events in Germany and Austria (Hallein).
Stuttgart Spielkreis
Very active folk dance group in Stuttgart, with demanding dances, established in 1947. He formerly belonged to Kurt Wager, Walter Kogler