G. W. F. Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the son of an official in the government of Württemberg, was born in Stuttgart on August 27, 1770. At seminary in Tübingen where he met German poet Hölderlin and Friedrich Schelling, who would have a profound influence on Hegel’s philosophy. He published his first major work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, in 1807. On November 14, 1831, Hegel died of cholera in Berlin, a year after being elected rector of the University of Berlin and four months after having been decorated by Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia.