Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm

The Brothers Grimm (Die Brüder Grimm or Die Gebrüder Grimm), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were German academics who together collected and published German folklore. The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of folktales, popularizing stories such as "Cinderella" ("Aschenputtel"), "The Frog Prince" ("Der Froschkönig"), "Hansel and Gretel" ("Hänsel und Gretel"), "Town Musicians of Bremen" ("Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten"), "Little Red Riding Hood" ("Rotkäppchen"), "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" ("Rumpelstilzchen"), "Sleeping Beauty" ("Dornröschen"), and "Snow White" ("Schneewittchen").

Their first collection of folktales, Children's and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), was first published in 1812.

The Brothers Grimm spent their formative years in the town of Hanau in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. Their father's death in 1796 (when Jacob was 11 and Wilhelm 10) caused great poverty for the family and greatly affected the brothers throughout their lives. Both brothers attended the University of Marburg, where they developed a curiosity about German folklore, which grew into a lifelong dedication to collecting German folktales.

The rise of Romanticism in 19th-century Europe revived interest in traditional folk stories, which to the Brothers Grimm represented a pure form of national literature and culture. With the goal of researching a scholarly treatise on folktales, they established a methodology for collecting and recording folk stories that became the basis for folklore studies. Between 1812 and 1857 their first collection was revised and republished many times, growing from 86 stories to more than 200.

In addition to writing and modifying folktales, the brothers wrote collections of well-respected Germanic and Scandinavian mythologies, and in 1838 they began writing a definitive German dictionary (Deutsches Wörterbuch), which they were unable to finish.

Seume, Johann Gottfried

Johann Gottfried Seume, born in 1763 in Poserna, who died in 1810 in Teplitz/Teplice, was a German writer and poet, who rose to fame with his travel books.

For Seume, equality and freedom of movement were not just ideals, but personal issues. At the turn of the 1700s and 1800s, the value of a man depended - to quote Seume - "on church records, the weight of his father's purse and the orders of the court marshal." Seume's own childhood family had lost much of their property as a result of the famine and price rises that hit Germany in the 1770s. When his father, a tenant farmer and innkeeper, died in 1776, the 13-year-old Johann Gottfried's future was at the mercy of his benefactors. The boy had shown talent at the village school and was offered a patronage by Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenthal, who paid for Seume's studies at Leipzig University on condition that he chose theology as his subject. Theology did not suit a young man of enlightened ideas, who detested the greed and arbitrariness of the church above all else. In 1781, Seume, aged 21, put aside his books and set off on a walk to Paris. Paradoxically, his quest for freedom led to the loss of freedom when he was captured by a Hessian recruiting force along the road - unofficial, destitute and untitled men were a desirable and valuable bargaining chip for the Prince of Hesse-Kassel, who sold 17 000 of his subjects to the English. The English needed reinforcements for the war against the colonies across the sea, known in the history books as the American War of Independence, and Seume was one of the victims of human trafficking sent by cargo ship to Canada to fight the colonial army. Fortunately, the war was over before the ship reached Halifax harbour. After the American episode, Seume reluctantly survived in a Hessian, later Prussian, camp, escaped the army twice and was sentenced to running the gauntlet - a punishment from which very few survived. But Seume was saved at the last moment: he was pardoned because he was giving language lessons to the daughter of a major-general who did not want to lose her tutor.

Seume then taught languages for a time in Leipzig, and became tutor to count von Igelström, whom, in 1792, he accompanied to Warsaw. There he became secretary to General von Igelström, and, as a Russian officer, experienced the terrors of the Polish insurrection (Kościuszko Uprising). In 1796 he returned to Leipzig and entered the employment of the publisher Göschen.

In December 1801, he quit his job as an editor and set out on his famous nine months' walk to Sicily, described in his Spaziergang nach Syrakus (1803). Some years later he visited the Baltic countries, Russia, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, a journey which he describes in his travel journal Mein Sommer im Jahr 1805. His health now began to fail, and he died on 13 June 1810, in Teplitz, nowadays Teplice, Czech Republic

Fürst, Max

Max Fürst, born in Königsberg (nowadays Kaliningrad) in 1905, emigrated - after being jailed and sent to the concentration camp at Oranienburg by the Gestapo - to Jerusalem, Haifa and Kairo in 1935.

In 1950 he returned to Germany and worked at the Odenwaldschule and Bernsteinschule. He died in Suttgart in 1978.

As an author he published his memories in Gefilte Fisch. Eine Jugend in Königsberg in 1976.   

Schlögel, Karl

Born in 1948, Karl Schlögel studied Philosophy, Sociology and East European History in West-Berlin. Professor emeritus of East European History at European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder).

Earlier published works are Moskau lesen (1984) and Terror und Traum. Moskau 1937 (2008). His most recent publication in German is American Matrix (2023). In English: Moscow 1937 (Polity Press 2012), The Scent of Empires. Chanel No 5 and Red Moscow (Polity Press 2021), Ukraine. A Nation on the Borderland (Reaktion Books 2022) and The Soviet Century. Archeology of al Lost World (2023). 

Among his awards are the Lessing-Preis der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg (2005), Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung (2009), Samuel-Bogumil-Linde-Preis (2010, together with Adam Krzemiński), Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse (2018) and Gerda Henkel Preis (2024). In 2025 he received the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (the international peace prize awarded annually by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, i.e. the German Publishers and Booksellers Association)

Bose, Günter Karl

Günter Karl Bose, born in 1951 in Debstedt, Geestland, studied German literature and Political science in Freiburg / Breisgau. He was a publisher in Berlin (Brinkmann & Bose) from 1980 to 1995 and Professor of Typography and Head of the Institute of Book Art at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig from 1993 to 2018. He has been working as a designer since the early 1980s.

His graphic works have been shown in exhibitions in Germany and abroad and can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Kunstbibliothek Berlin, the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, the Folkwang Museum Essen and the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt a. M. He has written numerous media and cultural studies.

His most recent book of essays are Elementum. Über Typografie, Bücher und Buchstaben, .. als geborener Märker und Kind vom Lande”. Richard Dehmel, Kremmen und die Mark [1863-1920], Der Stadtpark Schöneberg as well as Franz Kafka im Ostseebad Müritz [1923].

Schlippenbach, Ulrich von

Ulrich Freiherr von Schlippenbach was born in Kurzeme (Courland) on May 7, 1774. He came from the nobility, the son of a captain in the Prussian army. From 1790 Ulrich von Schlippenbach studied law and verbal sciences at the Universities of Königsberg and Leipzig.

When the Kosciuszko Uprising began in 1794, Ulrich von Schlippenbach enlisted in the Russian Imperial Army and remained there subsequently as a member of the St. Petersburg Guard, only to resign after the death of Catherine II.

Returning to Courland, Ulrich Hermann Freiherr von Schlippenbach served as a land notary of the district of Pilten from 1799 to 1807, then from 1807 to 1818 as Landrat of Pilten, and after the annexation of the Pilten district to Courland, in 1818, he was a counselor of the Courland Oberhofgericht, and from 1822 on also the chairman of the Courland Committee, which drafted a set of local laws for the provinces of the Baltic States. He owned the estates of Ulmalen and Jamaiken.

On von Schlippenbach's initiative, the Gesellschaft für Literatur und Kunst was founded in 1816 in Mitau (Jelgava).

Schlippenbach died on March 20, 1826, in the city of Mitau.