Wilhelm Raabe (September 8, 1831 – November 15, 1910), German novelist, whose early works were published under the pseudonym of Jakob Corvinus, was born in Eschershausen (then in the Duchy of Brunswick, now in the Holzminden District).

He served an apprenticeship at a bookseller's in Magdeburg for four years (1849–1854); but tiring of the routine of business, studied philosophy at Berlin (1855–1857). While a student at that university he published his first work, Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse (1857), which at once attained to great popularity.

Raabe next returned to Wolfenbüttel, and then lived (1862–1870) in Stuttgart, where he devoted himself entirely to authorship and wrote a number of novels and short stories; notably Unseres Herrgotts Kanzlei (1862); Der Hungerpastor (1864); Abu Telfan (1867) and Der Schüdderump (1870).

In 1870 Raabe removed to Brunswick and published the narratives Horacker (1876); Pfisters Mühle (1884); Das Odfeld (1889); Stopfkuchen (1891) – perhaps his masterpiece, Kloster Lugau (1894) and numerous other stories. Moving away from the idealized depictions of faith and family in his earlier, fairly typical Biedermeier period works to sometimes gritty social realism, his later works were much less popular than the earlier ones, which Raabe now came to regard as cheesy nonsense.

Christian Kracht (German pronunciation: [ˈkʁaxt]; born 29 December 1966) is a Swiss novelist and journalist.

Kracht was born in Saanen. His father, Christian Kracht Sr., was chief representative for the Axel Springer publishing company in the 1960s. Kracht attended Schule Schloss Salem in Baden and Lakefield College School in Ontario, Canada. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, New York, in 1989.

Kracht worked as a journalist for a number of magazines and newspapers in Germany, including Der Spiegel. In the mid-1990s he went to New Delhi as Spiegel's Indian correspondent, as successor of Tiziano Terzani. He subsequently lived for several years in Bangkok, in the former Yugoslavian embassy, and from there he visited various other Asian countries. His travel reports were published in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, and subsequently appeared as a book, Der Gelbe Bleistift ("The Yellow Pencil"), in 2000. Between September 2004 and June 2006 he published the magazine Der Freund in collaboration with the writer Eckhart Nickel. Initially he lived in Kathmandu while working as editor; however he left this position, and vacated Nepal, when political unrest in the country made working conditions too difficult. The magazine was finally completed in San Francisco; eight editions were published, as originally planned.

Wilhelm Walter Friedrich Kempff (25 November 1895 – 23 May 1991) was a German pianist and composer. Although his repertory included Bach, Liszt, Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms, Kempff was particularly well known for his interpretations of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert, both of whose complete sonatas he also recorded. He is considered to have been one of the chief exponents of the Germanic tradition during the 20th century.

Kempff was born in Jüterbog, Brandenburg, in 1895. He grew up in nearby Potsdam where his father was a royal music director and organist at St. Nicolai Church. His grandfather was also an organist and his brother Georg became director of church music at the University of Erlangen. Kempff studied music at first at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik at the age of nine after receiving lessons from his father at a younger age. Whilst there he studied composition with Robert Kahn and piano with Karl Heinrich Barth (with whom Arthur Rubinstein also studied). In 1914 Kempff moved on to study at the Viktoria gymnasium in Potsdam before returning to Berlin to finish his training.