Wilhelm

We want to have again our old Kaiser Wilhelm. But the one with the beard, with the long beard.

Wilhelm Friedrich Radloff is the famous German scientist who studied the history and folklore of Turkic peoples and compiled the first collection of Tatar folk dastans.

Wilhelm Steinitz, officially the first world chess champion, died in great poverty in New York on June 12, 1900, at the age of 64.

The first official contest for the title of World Chess Champion (a 24-game match) took place in New York, Saint Louis, and New Orleans between Wilhelm Steinitz (the winner) and Johannes Zukertort, in 1886.

Gliese 581 is a star in the constellation Libra named after the German astronomer Wilhelm Gliese. It is a red dwarf, and is among the 100 closest stars to the Sun. We know that it has at least three planetary companions: Gliese 581 b, c and e.

X-rays were discovered by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen.

As it happened, also, the particular Friedrichs and Wilhelms whom he meant to see and confer with were out of town, or had moved their habitats, so that he could not easily find them.

The dour Friedrich Wilhelm I, never out of uniform, accumulating tax income from a dozen different unconstitutional sources, takes time out from drilling his grenadiers to smash an inefficient postillion over the head with his cane. The sleepless Friedrich der Grosse, an atheist Calvin, rises at 6 a.m. to write the day’s orders to his bureaucrats, a shining example to the world of “enlightened despotism.” Even the feckless Friedrich Wilhelm III, defeated by a French revolutionary army, appoints a minister to tell him “Your majesty must do from above what the French have done from below.” […] When the king contemplated (God forbid) his abdication on the issue, Bismarck threw himself into the breach, accepted the office of Chancellor, defied the parliament, and collected the tax, just as the Friedrichs and Wilhelms had done before the French Revolution interrupted the course of progress.

The king’s palace, abode of all the Friedrichs and Wilhelms, had stood there, too, vacated after World War One, discreetly ignored by Hitler, bombed by the Allies in 1945, and finally demolished by the communists.

Eventually it [the law faculty] chose Friedrich Julius Stahl (1802–1861) – born Joel Golson (or Jolson). […] [Abraham] Uhlfelder’s activities were also efficient in assuring Joel’s (and other Jews’) admission to the renowned Protestant school, the Wilhelm Gymnasium.⁹⁶ It was there that Joel became acquainted with Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer – the Bannerträger des Neuhumanismus – and with the philosopher and [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe’s friend Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Joel also developed a special relationship with Friedrich Wilhelm Tiersch during his Gymnasium years. […] Clearly, his choice of a new name shows what it must have felt like to be a Joel surrounded by so many Friedrichs and Wilhelms.