Famous people from Frankfurt

"Were someone to ask me what place I thought more comfortable for my cradle, more fitting for my bourgeois attitudes, more appropriate for my poetic view, I could not name a better city than Frankfurt."
Goethe is regarded as a major literary figure whose powerful poems, plays, novels, essays, art, criticism and autobiographical books, make an ongoing contribution to literature. Composers like Beethoven, Berlioz and Liszt created musical pieces for works by Goethe. He achieved early recognition with his epistolary novel "Young Werther's Sorrows" (1774). The novel, which captured the sentimental vein of the period, was an international sensation and became a cult object at once. His dramas include, among others, "Stella" (1774), "Clavigo" (1774), "Egmont" (1775-87) and "Iphigenia in Tauris" (1787), but the two most significant dramatic works are "Faust I" (1773-1806) and "Faust II" (1832). Additionally, Goethe researched optics and plant biology.

Born to a father who owned a small store in Frankfurt's "Judengasse" (a street where only Jewish families resided), Mayer Amschel Rothschild started out his career humbly as a striving coin and medal dealer. At the time, little did he know that in the future he would accumulate an icredible fortune and establish the Rothschild financial empire, the House of Rothschild, which would be ruled by his five sons after his passing. He succeeded in business and subsequently began selling all sorts of antiques by mail order to aristocrats. With the capital he earned as Frankfurt's leading dealer, he would move into banking. This was indeed a startling and rapid economic rise by any measures.

"[Frankfurt is] the place where your own experience has its centre."
One of the leading philosophers of the 20th century, but also a magnificent writer, sociologist, composer, music theorist, a gifted pianist and a highly reputable literary commentator, Adorno possessed a most impressive intellectual breadth. His name is almost synonymous with the Frankfurt School, the term which encompasses the work of the members and collaborators of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. Adorno was one of its founders and guiding spirits. By many, he is called a genius. Included among his numerous writings are "Authoritarian Personality", "Aesthetic Theory", "Introduction to Sociology", "Philosophy of Modern Music" and "The Dialectix of Enlightenment" (co-written with Max Horkheimer). Adorno authored books and essays related to literature, sociology and philosophy, but had a particularly strong and intimate relationship with music.

Famous as no other female composer before or since, Schumann showed early musical gifts debuting publicly in a piano duet as a 9-year-old girl and making her solo debut three years later. Her talent helped her achieve the status of one of the leading 19th century concert pianists. She premiered new pieces by Brahms and Chopin, but mostly promoted compositions of her renowned spouse, Robert Schumann. An endowed composer herself, Clara Schumann began composing at the age of 9 and in her lifetime created as many as 66 works. It is hard to believe that her Piano Concerto, a wonderful composition by all means, was written when she was just 14.

An extremely skilled German scientist, Ehrlich can rightly be dubbed the father of immunology, chemotherapy, haemoatology and pharmacology. For his scientific achievements, he received innumerable awards, including the 1908 Nobel Prize in Psychology or Medicine, which he shared with Ilja Iljitsch Metchnikoff. Ehrlich is best remembered for his synthesis of "Salvarsan" in 1919 (later renamed "Neosalvarsan"), the first efficient remedy against human syphilis and associated diseases. Among his many other contributions to science and to mankind was the first empirical observation of the blood-brain barrier as well as pioneering research of dye reaction on white and red blood cells. Ehrlich had a special penchant for coining names, for instance "chemotherapy" and "magic bullet."