People with a strong Berlin connection - M
- Heinrich Gustav Magnus (1802–70) chemist and physicist. In 1831 he became lecturer and in 1834 professor of physics and technology at the University of Berlin. A brilliant and highly popular teacher, Magnus introduced the seminar and the teaching laboratory and was influential in the science of his time. The scope of his interests was broad; he was the first to prepare a platino-ammonium compound (Magnus’s green salt) and several acids and their salts. From his study of projectiles was developed the theory of the “Magnus effect,” the lateral force on rotating cylinders in air currents although this had been investigated earlier by Benjamin Robins and Leonhard Euler. It is the effect that produces banana kicks in football, and curve balls in baseball) His other investigations included studies in thermoelectricity, electrolysis, and vapor pressure.
- Karl Marx
Came to Berlin in 1836 and stayed until 1841. Studied philosophy and law at Berlin University, where he came under the influence of the ideas of Hegel. His teachers included Friedrich Karl von Savigny and Eduard Gans. He lived in Schützenstrasse. Became acquainted with Bettina von Arnim who he once invited to his home in Trier. After Wilhelm 1 came to power in 1862, he felt safe enough to return
- Walter Mehring co-founder of Berlin circle of Dada.
- Lise Meitner from Wien. Moved to Berlin in 1908? but is unable to be officially employed in the University labs (being a woman). Strong companionship with Max Planck. Discovered proactinium and fission in uranium. Left in 1938, after a job was secured for her in the Netherlands. Otto hahn, head of the institute in which she worked was under enormous pressure from the nazis to dismiss her. She continued to correspond with Hahn because she was reuired to interpret the continuing experiments in Berlin. While in sween and being visited by Otto Frisch, works out the theoretical basis of nuclear fission. Her co-worker, the chemist Otto Hahn, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1944. This is obviously a point of controversy, especially since Hahn didn't seeem to think anything was wrong. Meitner seems to have been ambivalent about the situation, possibly because she was more interested in the power aspects of nuclear fisson and was horrified to see it used to make an atomic bomb. Despite much coaxing, she refused to go to Los Alamos. Meitnerium. Spent last years in Cambridge, Britain.
- Felix Mendelssohn In 1820 he re-introduced St. Mathew's Passion to Berlin. Apparently should hace succeeded to the directorship of the Singakademie but was passed over, in this mediocre Beidermeier age, in favor of Karl Rungenhagen.
- Moses Mendelssohn Best known as grandfather of the composer. Came to Berlin at 14. Made his fortune as silk manufacturer and built a reputation as philosopher. Reputedly the model for Lessing's Nathan der Weise.
- Theodor Mommsen, (1817-1903), German historian, specialist in Roman history, one of the most influential German historians of the 19th century. Mommsen was born November 30, 1817, in Garding, Schleswig, and educated at the University of Kiel. He spent three years in the study of Roman inscriptions under the auspices of the Berlin Academy. In 1848 he was appointed to a chair of jurisprudence at the University of Leipzig, but lost his position two years later as a result of his political activities: at first a supporter of the monarchy against the republicans, he alienated the successful reactionaries by protesting against their violent retaliations. In 1852 he was appointed to the chair of Roman law at the University of Zurich, in 1854 to the same chair at the University of Breslau, and in 1858 to that of ancient history at the University of Berlin. There he was engaged for many years in editing the monumental Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, a body of Latin inscriptions. In 1873 Mommsen was elected perpetual secretary of the Academy. Mommsen became well-known for a series of historical and epigraphical works of vast range and profound erudition. He was the single most important person in the founding of modern Latin epigraphy. His greatest work, Roman History (1854-1856; trans. 1861), is still acclaimed as one of the most masterly histories ever written. A sequel, Roman Provinces (1885; trans. 1886), was also acclaimed. Many of Mommsen's separate pamphlets and articles were gathered in R?mische Forschungen (Roman Research, 2 vols., 1864). Mommsen was awarded the 1902 Nobel Prize for literature.
- Yehudi Menuhin
- Adolf Menzel painter, professor of Berlin Academy from 1856. His unfinished painting of the funeral of those killed in 1848 is displayed in Hamburg Kunsthalle.
- Theodor Mommsen historian, also member of the Prussian Landtag and German Reichstag. Critic of Bismarck as well as of the nationalistic and anti-semitic historian Treitschke. First German to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.