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Category: German Matters
German places and poetry and my humble attempts at translation- oh and yes, politics!
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Poems by Hermann Hesse
I am re-reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. And in doing a little Wiki research on the German novelist, I discovered he also wrote poetry. I bought a collection of his verses entitled Poems by Hermann Hesse: Selected and Translated By James Wright (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970). Most of the poems are short (which I […]
Poems by Hermann Hesse
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays transformed science and language alike. The term “X-ray,” born from the unknown, rapidly entered global English, bridging technical and everyday use. It expanded medical vocabulary and showed how scientific breakthroughs create lasting words, making invisible phenomena understandable and widely discussed across cultures and disciplines.
Birth of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845–1923) — The Scientist Who Gave English the Language of X-Rays
Erich Fromm transformed psychological and philosophical writing by giving it a more human voice. Writing in clear, accessible English, he explored love, freedom, and identity as lived experiences. His work bridged disciplines and brought complex ideas into everyday language, shaping how modern society understands the self, relationships, and emotional life.
Birth of Erich Fromm (1900–1980) — The Thinker Who Humanized the Language of Psychology
Born in 1879, Albert Einstein transformed modern physics through the theory of relativity, redefining how scientists describe space, time, energy, and gravity. As his ideas spread through English-language science, terms like spacetime, relativity, and mass–energy equivalence became central to the vocabulary used to explain the universe.
Birth of Albert Einstein (1879–1955) — The Mind That Redefined the Language of Modern Physics
The birth of Arthur Schopenhauer introduced a philosophical vocabulary that deepened literary English. His ideas on will, illusion, and suffering infused prose with intellectual gravity and introspective precision, enabling writers to articulate pessimism, psychological complexity, and metaphysical doubt with clarity, restraint, and conceptual authority.
Birth of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) – The Thinker Who Darkened and Deepened Literary English
On February 10, 1840, Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, and English entered a distinctly Victorian register. Their union helped stabilize a language of respectability, domestic virtue, and institutional authority. Journalism, biography, and private correspondence adopted disciplined sincerity, shaping a standardized, morally weighted English for generations.
Marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (1840) – The Union That Anchored Victorian English
In former times painters painted houses. Today painters have to invent houses and the architects have to build after the paintings because there are no more beautiful houses.[1] Viennese artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) represents the ultimate artist-architect of fantasy architecture. An artist influenced by the decorative artistic history of Secessionism, Expressionism, and the Wiener […]
The Colourful Artist-Architect: Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000)
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Hotel Budapest
E. T. A. Hoffmann reshaped literary imagination by turning terror inward. His stories fractured reality, destabilized reason, and made the mind itself the stage of fear and wonder. Through translation, his influence transformed English fantasy, horror, and psychological fiction, expanding narrative depth and redefining how literature explores consciousness.
Birth of E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) – The Writer Who Taught English to Fear the Mind
penwithlit 