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• Ernst Mach (1838-1916) | Gave his name to the air speed system that measures the speed of an aircraft in relation to the speed of sound, Mach 1 being the local speed of sound. Mach was an Austrian scientist and philosopher who served as a professor in Graz, Vienna, and Prague. He wrote many scholarly works, some of which are credited with helping to pave the way for Einstein's departure from Newtonian physics.

• Thomas Mann (1875-1955) | Buddenbrooks (1900), Death in Venice (1912), The Magic Mountain (1924), and Felix Krull (1954) are the most famous works of this Nobel Prize-winning writer (1929). His older brother Heinrich Mann (1871-1950) was also a noted novelist and writer (Professor Unrat, 1905 - the basis for the famous film, The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich). Both brothers spent the years after 1933 living in exile, most of that time in Santa Monica, California.

• Karl Marx (1818-1883) | German philosopher and writer whose enormous impact on the world — for good or bad — continues today. The “inventor” of communism was born Karl Heinrich Marx in the German city of Trier (then in Rhenish Prussia) to a Jewish family whose members were all Lutherans. Marx studied at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena. He was greatly influenced by the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Because of his rebellious tendencies, Marx spent most of his adult life in exile. After 1849, he lived the rest of his life in London with his wife and children, usually on the verge of starvation. Before going into British exile, Marx and his friend Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) had completed The Communist Manifesto (“Workers of the world, unite!”), first published in London in February 1848. Also in London Marx helped organize the First International (workers party, 1864) and wrote Das Kapital (1867-1894) — a work that consumed the last 25 years of his life. He was only able to finish the first three of five volumes before his death. (Engels completed the work based on Marx's notes.) Most of Marx's influence came after his death (at the age of 65), primarily in connection with Lenin's 1917 revolution in Russia (Marxism-Leninism).

• Karl May (1842-1912) | German writer who wrote some of his books about the American West in prison. Before writing his tales of the "Wild West," he had never seen the US. He made a brief visit to America shortly before his death, but he never saw the western United States he had written about. Like most Germans today, he preferred the Indians over the cowboys. Generations of German-speaking youth have grown up with the May-created characters of Old Shatterhand and Winnetou in books and movies. His numerous adventure books, including Durch die Wüste (1892), Winnetou (1893), and Im Lande des Mahdi (1896), are well-known in the German-speaking world. Only a few of May's works have ever been translated into English. (Karl May photo; Karl May Web links)

• Ulrike Marie Meinhof (1934-1976) | Of the infamous Baader-Meinhof gang.

• Lise Meitner (1878-1968) | Austrian physicist, born in Vienna, who did important work in beta and gamma radiation. In 1905 Meitner became only the second Austrian woman to receive a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna. Two years later she went to Berlin to work with the chemist Otto Hahn, an association that lasted some 30 years. Meitner became a professor of physics at the University of Berlin in 1926. After the Nazis came to power, Meitner continued her scientific work in Stockholm. It was during her work in Scandinavia that she helped coin the term ?nuclear fission.? However, she refused to work on the atomic bomb, and later retired to England.

• Phillip Melanchthon (Phillip Schwartzerd, 1497-1560) | German scholar and religious reformer, who worked with Luther and wrote or helped draft several important Protestant works, including the Augsburg Confession (1530), the key document of the Lutheran faith. Melanchthon helped temper Luther's views and was a force for reconcilation between Protestants and Catholics.

• H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) | Henry Lewis Mencken was the son of German-Americans in Baltimore. He became a famous and controversial journalist and literary critic. His authoritative multivolume work, The American Language, was published between 1919 and 1948. In the Smart Set, the American Mercury, and the Baltimore Sun, Mencken wrote his unflinching, politically incorrect criticisms of American life, to the point of being called "the most hated man in America." He also wrote about the Germans in America, lamenting the fading of their native language and literature. Among his last written words: “After all these years, I remain a foreigner.”

• Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854-1899) | Invented the famous Linotype typesetting machine, first used in 1886 for the New York Tribune. His invention required ten years of hard work and revolutionized the printing of books and newspapers. Mergenthaler was born in Hachtel, Germany. He died in Baltimore, Maryland.

• Franz Johann Mesmer (1734-1815) | Austrian physician who gave us the word “mesmerize.” After being accused of practicing magic rather than medicine, Mesmer was forced to leave Austria in 1778. His technique of mesmerism was an early form of hypnotism, misunderstood both by the medical community and Mesmer himself. A French commission, of which Benjamin Franklin was a member, rendered an unfavorable judgment against Mesmer in 1784, claiming his cures were not due to "animal magnetism" as he claimed.

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) | Began his musical career at the age of four. His musical creations in opera, chamber music, symphonies, and piano concertos are considered by many to be some of the most superb of all time. Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria but spent most of his working life in Vienna. (Link for Mozart)

• Thomas Nast (1840-1902) | Born in Landau, Germany, Nast later went to America and became the creator of the Democratic and Republican party mascots and the “American” image of Santa Claus. He is famous for his biting political cartoons.

• Richard Josef Neutra (1892-1970) | This Austrian-American architect came to the U.S. in 1923 to work in Chicago with Frank Lloyd Wright and other American architects. He became known for his own unique designs in steel and concrete after his earlier work with houses, using natural materials.

• Helmut Newton (1920-2004) | Noted German fashion photographer. Newton, who hailed from Berlin, helped revolutionize fashion photography in the 1970s by foregoing the studio in favor of natural outdoor settings. He was infamous for his stylish photos of leggy women (often in the nude) and erotic, kinky fashion photos. Newton died following an auto accident in Los Angeles.

• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) | The German philosopher and writer, born in Saxony in eastern Germany, became famous for his Übermensch (superman) and the wisdom of his Zarathustra. His philosophy, expounded in works like Die Geburt der Tragödie (The Birth of Tragedy, 1872), Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883), and Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power, 1888), was falsely adopted by the Nazis (aided by Nietzsche's sister), but only by corrupting and editing Nietzsche's true ideas, which rejected anti-Semitism, as well as German nationalistic and racist tendencies. Nietzsche suffered from physical and mental illness in his last years. (See Nietzsche quotation above.) - View Nietzsche's grave in Germany.

• Georg Simon Ohm (1789-1854) | German physicist for whom the ohm, a unit of electrical resistance, is named. As a professor of physics at the Polytechnische Schule in Nürnberg and later in Munich, Ohm made important discoveries about electrical properties that came to be formulated as Ohm's Law (1827).

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