Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1 July 1742 – 24 February 1799) was a German physicist, satirist, and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany. He is remembered for his posthumously published notebooks, which he himself called sudelbücher, a description modeled on the English bookkeeping term "waste books" or "scrapbooks", and for his discovery of tree-like electrical discharge patterns now called Lichtenberg figures. He maintained relations with many famous figures of his era, including Immanuel Kant and the historical MAP figure Goethe.

Prof. Florian Mildenberger states that "Georg Christoph Lichtenberg maintained sexual contacts with a 12-year-old admirer", and the English Wikipedia page for Lichtenberg writes:

In 1777, he met Maria Stechard, then aged 13, who lived with the professor permanently after 1780. She died in 1782. Their relationship was made into a novel by Gert Hofmann, which was translated by his son Michael Hofmann into English with the title "Lichtenberg and the Little Flower Girl". In 1783, the following year, Lichtenberg met Margarethe Kellner (1768–1848) [then 15 years of age - Newgon]. He married her in 1789 [at 21], to give her a pension, as he thought he was to die soon. They had six children and she outlived him by 49 years.

See also

• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Novalis
• Thomas Mann
• Wilhelm von Gloeden