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| Lagerlöf, Selma (1858 - 1940) |
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| Selma Lagerlöf |
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The Värmland in Sweden, rich in forests and
seas, is the home of the officer's daughter Lagerlöf. She studies
at the Royal Women's Superior Training Academy in Stockholm and
becomes a teacher at the girls' secondary school in the seaport
Landskrona in 1885. In 1890 her novel 'Gösta Berling' receives
wide critical acclaim and gains her worldwide reputation. It follows
a period of continuous work, which is only interrupted by some journeys
to Italy and to the Middle East. In 1904 she receives the golden
medal of the Swedish Academy, in 1909 the Nobel Prize for literature.
"Prior to me, on the garden way, lies a small pile of light
yellow fall foliage. At night, during an evil dream, a small young
birch has shaken off its leafage, and here it lies now, flashing
like gold. 'Look there, a small part of the gold of my Nobel Prize',
I think to myself."
The universities of Uppsala, Greifswald and Kiel granted Selma Lagerlöf
the honorary doctor, France appointed her as a knight of its honor
legion. She passed away at the age of 82 years at her mansion in
Marbacka.
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The appearance of Leibniz arises like a beaming
comet from the mental scantiness, which followed the thirty-year
war. He is the real founder of the newer German philosophy, which
should later be tremendously famous.
Leibniz 'almost incredible versatility - he performed
essential work as a philosopher, theologian, diplomat, mathematician,
historian and librarian - can only be truly understood, if one knows,
that besides dealing with technical things like clocks, windmills
and hydraulic press, he also worked as a geologist. Nevertheless
it can not be denied, that a piece of courtly nature stuck in Leibniz,
a tendency to avoid all shock, a way of presenting the things easily,
pleasing and as smoothly as possible. By the end of his life he
suffered the fate, which many great men in the service of the princes
have endured. He fell in disgrace and passed away isolated and embittered,
however actively working at his desk up to the last day.
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| Leibniz |
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| Luther, Martin (1483 - 1546) |
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| Luther Martin |
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The medieval church had elevated a number of sacred
works above the remaining life, out of the understandable impetus
to make known the infinite gratitude for divine love and mercy through
extraordinary performances. Luther's opposition to this meant by
no means an extenuation of the religious character of life, but
consisted therein, that the simple work of the erveryday life is
also able to attain a consecration, in accordance with the conviction:
"Our sanctuary is the word of God and makes all things sacred."
Through this development the Protestant piety moved far away from
the catholic piety; two entirely different worlds arose. "Neither
the pope nor a bishop nor any a person has a right, to declare a
single syllable on the subject of a Christian man, if it does not
happen with his consent; which happens in a different way, that
happens in a tyrannical way."
In the year 1512 Luther, professor of the theology, puts up 95 theses
on the defense of the reduction abuse on the Schloßkirche
in Wittenberg. Three fundamental reformation writings follow in
1520. At the Reichstag in Worms Luther is threatened the exile.
The knights of his elector save Luther and bring him to the Wartburg,
where at first he translates the New Testament and in 1534 translates
the whole bible. After his return to Wittenberg, Luther starts the
structure of the Protestant church.
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| Mann, Thomas (1875 - 1955) |
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The 'Buddenbrooks' made the poet famous in 1901
and yielded him the Nobel prize for literature in 1929.
"You will be surprised, to hear my reply to your question about
what I believe in or what I put at the supreme: It is the transitoriness.
But you will say transitoriness is somethingt very sad. - Answer:
No it is the soul of the being; it is what grants value, dignity
and interest to all life, since it creates time - and time is, at
least potentially, the highest, most useful gift, in its nature
related, even identically to all creativity, all perfection, every
progress to the high and better. Where transitoriness does not exist,
no beginning and end, birth and death, there is no time - and timelessness
is the permanent nothing, as good and bad as this, the absolute
uninterresting."(from ''Altes und Neues' ("Old and New"))
In 1933 Thomas Mann emigrated to the USA. Here he composed one of
his most important novels, the 'Doktor Faustus'. Returned to Switzerland,
he finished the first part of the novel "Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers
Felix Krull" ("Confessions of the impostor Felix Krull").
Thomas Mann passed away at August, 12 1955 in Kilchberg near Zurich.
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| Thomas Mann |
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